What is a reference?

You are expected to acknowledge any material in books etc that you have used in reports/dissertations etc

British Standards BS1629: 1976 and BS5605: 1990 define a bibliographical reference as:
" a set of data or elements describing a document, or part of a document, and sufficiently precise and detailed to enable a potential reader to identify and locate it".

Why Reference?

To avoid plagiarism

To show you have read a piece of work and understood it

To show courtesy to the original author

To track your reading/note-taking

To back up an argument

When to Reference?

To quote an individual directly

To identify an authors thought/ideas

To use specific information from an author, such as tables or statistics

Referencing is used so that the reader can locate the source of information solely from the reference provided