Noun

Singular bibliography

Plural bibliographies

bibliography (plural bibliographies)

1. A section of a written work containing citations, not quotations, to all the books referenced in the work.
2. A list of books or documents relevant to a particular subject or author.
3. The study of the history of books in terms of their classification, printing and publication.

Derived terms

• bibliographer
• bibliographic
• annotated bibliography

Related terms

• bibliology
• reference list

Bibliography (from Greek βιβλιογραφία, bibliographia, literally "book writing"), as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from Greek -λογία, -logia). On the whole, bibliography is not concerned with the literary content of books, but rather the "bookness" of books.

A bibliography, the product of the practice of bibliography, is a systematic list of books and other works such as journal articles. Bibliographies range from "works cited" lists at the end of books and articles to complete, independent publications. As separate works, they may be in bound volumes such as those shown on the right, or computerised bibliographic databases. A library catalog, while not referred to as a bibliography, is bibliographic in nature. Bibliographical works are almost always considered to be tertiary sources.

Bibliographic works differ in the amount of detail depending on the purpose, and can be generally divided into two categories: enumerative bibliography (also called compilative, reference or systematic), which results in an overview of publications in a particular category, and analytical, or critical, bibliography, which studies the production of books. In earlier times, bibliography mostly focused on books. Now, both categories of bibliography cover works in other formats including recordings, motion pictures and videos, graphic objects, databases, CD-ROMs and websites.