Harvard Referencing: Online Audio and Podcast Episodes

Learning Services has been asked several times about how to reference online audio files and podcasts. I guess students are wanting to reference interviews and conversations that are being increasingly made available as audio online.

Looking at what other institutions recommend, Coventry University's 'Harvard Reference Style Guide' advises to "reference the broadcast in the normal way but then add all the information to enable your reader [to] locate this source online".

They say the sections for a broadcast are:

• TITLE of the broadcast in italics
• Year published in brackets
• Online in square brackets
• Station or channel followed by a full stop
• Date of broadcast
• Full web address starting with <>
• Date of access in square brackets

This would mean to reference an episode of a podcast, lets say Boagworld:
http://www.boagworld.com/archives/2008/02/111_utopia.html

...part of the Boagworld podcast:
http://www.boagworld.com/podcast/

It's reference could be:
111. Utopia (2008) [online] Boagworld. 14 February 2008 < http://www.boagworld.com/archives/2008/02/111_utopia.html > [17th February 2008]

This is:

• TITLE of the episode in italics
• Year published in brackets
• Online in square brackets
• Podcast name followed by a full stop
• Date of release
• Full web address of the audio file starting with <>
• Date of access in square brackets

The document ‘Citing and Referencing Guide: Harvard Style’ from Imperial College, London gives similar guidelines, but also adds that the access date should include the time and timezone that the file was accessed down to the second. For example. [Accessed 2nd October 2007. GMT 18:11:06]


For a standalone audio file that is not part of a podcast, I would recommend changing the Podcast name to the person who is speaking or organisation who published it.

So for the audio file entitled 'Online Discussion' at:
http://stream.edgehill.ac.uk/Solstice/forum_january/03_cathysherratt.wma

the reference would be:
Online Discussion (2007) [online] Cathy Sherratt. 16 January 2007 < http://stream.edgehill.ac.uk/Solstice/forum_january/03_cathysherratt.wma >

or

Online Discussion (2007) [online] Cathy Sherratt. 16 January 2007 < http://stream.edgehill.ac.uk/Solstice/forum_january/03_cathysherratt.wma > [Accessed 2nd October 2007. GMT 18:11:06]


Obviously this would be adjusted a little to fit our guidelines, but what do people think?

I think that the addition of the time accessed down to the second is important with many of the new Web technologies, as they can be changed on a very regular basis. For example Wikis which usually give you the ability to see how a document looked at any specific date and time. Audio and video files are more difficult to change, so would probably go through less changes, but some podcasts still re-edit and re-post episodes (e.g. GeekBrief).