The most wide-spread form of bibliographical information is bibliographical description which includes: the title of the bibliographical description (author or name of the organization) and bibliographical description, which is supplemented with classification indices, subject entries, key words, annotation or abstract. The degree of completeness of a bibliographical description is determined by the aims and tasks of a concrete bibliographing agency – the compiler of the bibliographical manual.

In connection with the introduction of a new inter-state standard on bibliographical description - ГОСТ 7.1–2003, the University has developed a new standard of organization which was introduced into operation from the new academic year – 2005-2006. It specifies the change in the title description, which is regulated by ГОСТ 7.80-2000 «Библиографическая запись. Заголовок. Общие требования и правила составления». The standard establishes the general requirements and rules of compiling a bibliographical description of the document, its part or group of documents and applies to the bibliographical description of documents that are made by students, graduate students, post-graduate students, teachers and researchers to academic and research works.

Why is a bibliographical description necessary, what is its purpose? In ГОСТ 7.1-2003 they give the following definition of the bibliographical description: “A bibliographical description contains the bibliographical data about the document, given in accord with definite rules that determine the content and order of succession of the fields and elements and meant for the identification and general characteristics of the document”. That is, the main aim of making the bibliographical description is to give characteristics to the document and present the data necessary for its search. The object of making a bibliographical description are all kinds of published (books, articles) and unpublished documents (dissertations, scientific-research work statements), documents on any carriers (printed, electronic, audio-visual).

The main change regulated by ГОСТ 7.80 is the comma. The necessity of this change was caused by the active involvement of the bibliographical activity in the NIS in the world library-bibliographical space, which at present tend to be realized through the Global net Internet. This necessitates unification of bibliographical records.

Proceeding from the fact that list of references is a constituent part of academic and research works of students, graduate students, post-graduate students and teachers of our university, these works, as a rule, remain unpublished, the developers of the standard of organization decided not to use a comma in the title of the bibliographical record.

The main content of a bibliographical record is the bibliographical description which includes the following areas:

1 – area of title and information about responsibility;

2 – area of edition;

3 – area of specific information;

4 – area of publisher's imprint;

5 – area of physical description;

6 – area of series;

7 – area of annotation;

8 – area of standard number (or its alternative) and accessibility conditions.

Areas of description consist of elements that are divided into compulsory and optional (additional information of the document). Compulsory information (title, information of responsibility, place and year of publication) together with the title ensures the identification of the document. They are given in any description.

Special attention should be paid to the punctuation in a bibliographical description, which performs two functions: usual grammatical punctuation and the signs of the imposed punctuation, i.e. signs that have an identifying character for the areas and elements of the bibliographical description. The prescribed punctuation (conventional signs of delimitation) help to identify separate elements in descriptions made in different languages in publisher's imprint forms of the traditional and machine-readable cataloging – records presented in printed cards, in bibliographical indices, lists, on computer monitor screens, and so on.

The prescribed punctuation precedes the elements and areas or concludes them. Its use is not connected with the language standards. Prescribed punctuation includes punctuation marks and mathematical signs:

. – dot and dash;

. dot;

, comma;

: colon;

; semicolon;

… three dots;

/ slash;

// double slash;

( ) brackets;

[ ] square brackets;

+ plus sign;

= equality sign.

At the end of the bibliographical description a full stop is put.

Each area of description except the first is preceded by the sign dot and dash, which is placed before the first element of the area. For a more distinct division of areas and elements, as well as for differentiating the prescribed and the grammatical punctuation, white space equal to one sign is used before and after the prescribed sign. Exclusion from the rule is made for a full stop and a comma – white space is placed only after them.

When making a bibliographical description it is necessary to remember that the main source of information for it is the element of the document which contains the major publisher's imprint and similar information - title page, title screen, label, sticker, and so on.

For each area of description of definite kind documents there is a prescribed (main) source of information – one or several (foe example, for the title area and responsibility information, the prescribed sources are: the title page – for books, the front and the back pages – for newspapers). Information taken from an unordered source of information is given in square brackets.

Bibliographical information is quoted in the description in the form it is given in the source of information.

When making a bibliographical description, to ensure its complex character it is possible to use abbreviations of words and word-combinations, omission of a part of an element, integration of different records into one bibliographical record and other techniques of abbreviation. Abbreviations are used in all areas of the bibliographical description. It is forbidden to abbreviate any titles in any area (except for cases when the abbreviation is present in the source of information itself) and the general designation of the material.

In a bibliographical description one must observe modern orthography rules. Capital letters must be used in accordance with modern rules of grammar of the language in which the description is compiled. The first word in each area must be capitalized, as well as the first word of the following elements: general designation of the material and any titles in all areas of the description. Numerals in a bibliographical description, as a rule, are quoted in the form they are given in the source of information, i.e. by Roman or Arabic figures, or in a verbal form.

Depending on the structure of the description one distinguishes between one-level and multi-level bibliographical description. A one-level description contains information about a one-volume edition, and a multi-level bibliographical description – about a multi-volume edition. In academic and research works analytical bibliographical description is very often used.

The object of an analytical bibliographical description is that constituent part of the document which needs information about the location of the document for its identification and search. The constituent parts include:

- independent work;

- part of some work having an independent title;

- part of some work without an independent title, but singled out for the purposes of bibliographical identification.

Analytical bibliographical description is the main element of an analytical bibliographical record and it includes:

- information that identify the constituent part;

- connecting element;

- information about the identifying document;

- information about the location of the constituent part in the document;

- notes.

To look through ГОСТ 7.1–2003 and get a more detailed advice on compiling a bibliographical description is possible in the scientific-bibliographical division and sector of scientific processing of literature of the University scientific library named after S. Beisembayev. Besides, the scientific-bibliographical division issued methodical recommendations «Библиографическое описание документа» (Bibliographical description of a document) with examples of documents description on material and electronic carriers.

Remember: a correctly compiled list of references raises the quality and informative value of academic and research works.