Teaching Bibliographic Sources and Styles to Graduate Students

ARECENT ARTICLE called attention to the movement existing in numerous institutions to insist "on the formal study of bibliographic materials as a part of the graduate school program."1 There are evidences in library literature that bibliography is being taught to advanced students in various disciplines.2 However, a cursory review of the literature fails to reveal discussion of a program similar to the course that began in 1948 at Florida State University. In this course, the bibliographic sources common to research investigation in all subject areas and the bibliographic styles appropriate for the varied types of library materials are presented to give students confidence in two major aspects of research: the searching and the citing of library sources. Perhaps this is a novel experiment in that all graduate students, regardless of subject specialization, attend the same course.