BFA Thesis Resources

The library offers a number of resources to you in your Thesis year. In addition to information on citation styles and bibliography creation, you can find examples of past work, video tutorials for thesis layout formatting, Interlibrary loan information, and citation management applications.

When you write your Thesis you will use The Chicago manual of style or A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, by Kate Turabian and you will employ Notes/Bibliography (NB) style for your citations. Use either footnotes or endnotes, not both. However, you will always have a bibliography. The bibliography will include not only the resources you cited in your notes, but any other resources that you consulted while writing your Thesis.

Chicago and Turabian Style citation online resources

Chicago Manual of Style
The OWL at Purdue
This site offers information on basic citations as well as a very helpful sample paper. For formatting examples specific to PNCA and your Thesis, please consult the PNCA Thesis Handbook.

KnightCite helps you build bibliography citations!

Cite Source at Trinity College offers discipline-specific help on Chicago-style citations including helpful PDFs on citing images in your text.

Cite Images (download the PDF)

Turabian
Turabian citation guide
Basic Notes and Bibliography (NB) citation styles for Turabian.

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Helpful Books

Click the titles to see the book in the library catalog.
Ballenger, Bruce. The Curious Researcher, MLA Update Edition. 6th ed. Longman, 2009.

Barnet, Sylvan. A Short Guide to Writing About Art. 9th ed. Prentice Hall, 2007.

Staff, University of Chicago Press, ed. The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition. 16th ed. University Of Chicago Press, 2010.

Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Seventh Edition: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers. Edited by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, and University of Chicago Press Staff. 7th ed. University Of Chicago Press, 2007.

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PNCA Thesis Handbook and Sample Formatting on First Section

PNCA Spring 2012 Thesis Handbook

Sample Formatting on First Section of PNCA Thesis Paper

Citation Management

Manage your citations with the free Firefox plugin, Zotero. You can create folders, sign up for an online account to access your citations anywhere, and share your resources with other Zotero users. In addition, you can link to articles on your computer and make bibliographies! Add every book you check out, every article you download, and every web resource you use for easy reference later. Then add tags and notes to link resources together.

Worldcat is a huge catalog made up of the catalogs of libraries all over the world. It’s also compatible with Zotero! Additionally, in the record of any book, DVD, or video, there is an option to “Cite this item.” Clicking on this link will give you the proper citation to cut and paste into your bibliography. You can also create an account on Worldcat and create lists that you can turn into bibliographies. Here’s a YouTube video that explains the process.

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Helpful Video Tutorials from the Help Desk

The Help Desk at PNCA has some helpful tutorials to aid you in formatting certain parts of your Thesis, such as pagination for different sections, correct margin sizes, and how to create portfolios on Homeroom and add files. Check the Help Desk’s Thesis section for up-to-date tutorials.

Formatting your thesis in Word and Pages. Includes tutorials on how to insert page numbers, save as a PDF, insert footnotes, create placeholders for your images, and headers and footers.

Digitally Submitting your Thesis

Official PNCA Digital Thesis Portfolio Submission

In order to submit your printed thesis to the library, you must first submit a Digital Thesis Portfolio to Homeroom and have it accepted. Please see the document below for instructions, portfolio content, and file specifications.

Digital Portfolio Submission Instructions (Google Doc — read online or download PDF)

Here are some video tutorials on how to compress your files to upload, and how creating and submitting your official digital thesis portfolio.

Digitally Submitting your Thesis

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Past Thesis Work

Find print Theses in the library by searching the library catalog, Alexandria. You can search by the author’s name, title of thesis, or year. However, if you don’t know any of this information, you can select “Call Numbers” from the search terms menu and enter “Thesis.” This will allow you to browse all items with THESIS in the call number. Theses may not be checked out of the library, but you are welcome to peruse them here.

In addition, all digital Theses since 2008 have been cataloged and are available via PNCA’s institutional repository, Mimi. Find Thesis papers and accompanying works by searching for the author’s name, title of thesis, type of work, subject matter, date, or even tags. Presently, only those with a pnca.edu account may log into Mimi.

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Research

Databases

Scholarly Journals

We subscribe to a number of excellent scholarly journals that might aid your in your research. They can be found here: Scholarly Journals.

Area Libraries

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Interlibrary Loan

If the PNCA library does not offer a resource you need (book, article, audio/visual), you may request that we acquire it via interlibrary loan. Just about anything you can find in Worldcat, we can get for you. Please be sure to give us some lead-time to request the item and have it shipped here.

Use our Interlibrary Loan form to request an item.

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