Secondary Sources in AGLC: Citing a Book

As a dedicated legal referencing system, AGLC has specific rules for citing cases and legislation. But what about other, non-legal sources, like textbooks? Can you also cite these?

Of course you can! However, the rules are a little different for citing secondary sources. In the following, for instance, we run through how to cite a book with AGLC.

Footnote References in AGLC

AGLC indicates a reference using superscript numbers (e.g. ¹, ², ³) in the main text of your essay. When citing a book, the following information should be provided in the footnote:

^n. Author’s Name, Title of Book (Publisher, Edition, Year) Pinpoint.

In the above, the edition is only included if the book you’re citing has more than one published version, while ‘pinpoint’ refers to the specific page(s) being cited. For instance:

^1. Rory McJudge, Knowing the Law (NexusLexus, 2^nd ed, 2014) 534.

If a source has four or more authors, simply name the first listed author and use ‘et al’ to show that other names have been excluded from the footnote.

Repeat Citations

To save having to duplicate information every time you cite a source, AGLC uses a shortened footnote format for repeat citations. The rules for this depend on whether you’re citing two same source twice in a row:

• For consecutive citations of the same source, use the Latin term ‘ibid’, which means ‘in the same place’.
• For non-consecutive citations, you will need the author’s surname and a bracketed cross reference to the footnote where the source was first cited.

If you’re referring to a different part of the same text, moreover, you should also give a new pinpoint reference. In practice, then, repeat citations of a source might look something like the following:

^1. Rory McJudge, Knowing the Law (NexusLexus, 2^nd ed, 2014) 534.
^2. Ibid.
^3. Navigation Act 2012 (Cth) s 14.
^4. McJudge (n 1) 454.
^5. Ibid 243-244.

If citing more than one source by the same author, moreover, you can use a shortened version of the title in non-consecutive citations to show which source is being referenced in each case.

In the Bibliography

As well as citing secondary sources in footnotes, AGLC referencing requires all sources to be included in a bibliography at the end of your document. Books go in the first section of the bibliography (i.e. Articles, Books and Reports), listed alphabetically by author surname.

The information to include here is similar to the first footnote, but with the author’s names inverted, no pinpoint reference and no full stop:

Surname, First Name/Initial, Title of Book (Publisher, Edition, Year)

Consequently, the bibliography entry for the book cited in the examples above would be:

McJudge, Rory, Knowing the Law (NexusLexus, 2^nd ed, 2014)

If a source has more than one author, only the first one listed has their names reversed. As with footnote references, sources with four or more authors should use ‘et al’ after the first listed author to show that other contributors have been excluded.