TYPES OF BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Bibliographies are regarded as most important tools in libraries and documentation centers. This is
due to the fact that they allow free flow. of bibliographic information on the published literature of all
disciplines. Talking about types of bibliographies, most bibliographies are subject bibliographies but
there cannot be effective subject bibliographies unless there are wide-ranging and efficient

generalbibliographies.

 Besides the subject bibliographies, the national bibliographies, also referred to as current
bibliographies, are very popular as they can be used for searching current and retrospective information.
The other types of known bibliographies are the trade bibliographies and the universalbibliographies.

Subject Bibliographies

 The subject bibliographies form the largest group of enumerative bibliographies. It is defined as the
one that deals with the materials pertaining to a single given subject which may be a place (for example
United States), a person (Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru), a broad subject (Social Sciences, Computer Science)
or a minute branch of any subject ( Solid State Physics), a thing (Computers). Ranganathan defined a
subject bibliography as the one that is a document bibliography confined to a specific subject field,
instead of covering the entire universe of subject

 The subject bibliographies may occur as independent publications or parts of documents. They will
have a limited scope with regard to form of material, time span, sources of origin and language. They are
usually either selective or comprehensive and may be current or retrospective. Depending on the
contents of subject bibliographies, they can be divided into several categories, a few of which are given
below:

a) Reference bibliographies
 The subject bibliographies which are mostly used for reference fall into this category. These
bibliographies are considered to be exhaustive bibliographies. It is often quite impossible to compile
absolutely exhaustive bibliographies, recording every single published document on any subject because
so much of published material escapes advertisement, legal deposit and the scattering of publications to
books and journals is a problem which escapes the bibliographers vigilance.

These types of publications therefore only aim to be exhaustive within chosen limits, which should be
made clear by the bibliographers. Material published in foreign languages is also a major limitation. 
The reference bibliographies can either be ad- hoc, with occasional revisions or supplements or serial
bibliographies with benefit of regular, at time frequent publication, and time saving cumulations. They
also include indexing and abstracting services.

b) Reading lists
 Large sized subject bibliographies are important, especially when they have a wide coverage. But they
are not enough as anyone wishing to study a particular subject, at whatever level, needs a carefully
prepared select bibliography of it. Such a bibliography must be appropriate in scale and cautious in its
inclusion of out- of-print publications. It must be helpfully arranged and annotated and reasonably up to
date. The more suitable, the more usual name for this kind of bibliography is`reading list' .
 The reading lists are quite common and produced by people who know or should know the literature
they recommend. The reading lists are often prepared by teachers for distribution to students. At the
end of textbooks, under the heading `Further Reading' is a common sight for all of us. This is also a type
of reading list although, these may not be of good quality

.  A bibliography or a reading list supporting a research article or a review article is usually very valuable
for reference purpose as lot of effort goes into preparation of such lists.

C) Subject indexes and abstracting services

 Searching of documents on a particular aspect of a subject can be a very time consuming effort if a
large number of scattered references are to be gathered together. A helpful scanning of literature can
be carried out by searching from the indexes of books and periodicals. There are also serials available,
called indexing services, which include all details of the published documents in a helpful sequence. In
some cases, the entries also include summaries of the texts, these are known as the abstracting services.
 Most of the periodicals of reference value usually have their own indexes (when record of all the
articles that appear in a periodical and are usually appended to a full volume of a periodical). Cumulated
indexes, e.g., ten-year or five year cumulations are also available in many cases. Presently, computerised
indexes on microfiche are also available .
 The indexing and abstracting services have great importance for users searching documents for
current and retrospective search of literature. The indexing services are usually an author-subject index
of books, pamphlets, periodical articles, theses or any other media on any given subject. On the other
hand, the abstracting services have some kind of classified or subject arrangement wherein the entries
under a subject are arranged author-wise with all the bibliographic details and an abstract of the original
text. The classified part is supported by author, title and subject indexes forsearching.

Citation indexes, another kind of indexes, enable a researcher who has details of one reference to a
subject in which he is interested, to find other references linked to it or cited which have been published
later. The first such an index to be published was Science Citation Index, Philadelphia : ISI (1900-
present). The citation indexes on SocialScience(1956-present) and Arts & Humanities((1975-present) are
published by ISI.
 These three citation indexes plus Index Chemicus(1993) and Current Chemical Reactions (1986) are
now part of Web of Science(Thomson), an international citation index.
 Serial lists of the contents of the latest issues of the leading periodicals on a particular subject are a
recent addition to the bibliographies which control periodical literature. The best known of this is the
one published by the Institute for Scientific Information. U.S.A., that is, Current Contents Life Sciences,
1961-. There are other series also on different subjects.
 Current awareness bulletins, especially prepared by special libraries also help their users by presenting
the lists of new periodical articles, either as subject lists or as contents lists. They may also include lists
of new books added to the library.
d) Bibliographic reviews
 Bibliographic reviews perform a combined function of providing information and judgment about title
items reviewed and therefore, serve as useful bibliographic contributions made to a particular subject
field. These can be in the form of current advances, annual reviews or state-of -the-art on a subject area.
 A good example for this is Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 1966-
Selective bibliography
 The selective bibliographies list selected items which are arranged systematically, usually according to
the subject. They are more useful for retrospective material, meant especially for medium and small size
libraries.

Personal Bibliography
 Personal bibliography is “a list of writings by and on a person”. In the field of literature, personal
bibliographies are extremely important. It can be of two kinds: a) an author bibliographies a complete
list of all documents by an author. It is purely ‘by’ kind of author bibliography. This would cover all the
literature written by the author.
b) A list of writings on a person is a kind of personal bibliography called a subject bibliography because in
such a case, the person as an entity becomes the subject of the study.

Bibliophilic bibliographies
 Bibliophile, a person who loves books, quite often collects books from the point of view peculiarities in
the physique of books. Any such bibliography is called bibliophilic bibliography.
Dissertation bibliographies
 Many countries bring out bibliographies of dissertations, which are of great importance to research
scholars. Many indexing and abstracting services also include dissertations.