how does the harvard referencing system work
Particular referencing styles are preferred by particular academic disciplines because they work better with the kind of texts that are most commonly used in that discipline. At Reading, for instance, English Literature and Film, Theatre and Television both prefer the MHRA (Modern Humanities Research Association) style because it is good at dealing with repeated references to a literary text, but while English Literature use the classic version of MHRA, Film, Theatre and Television prefer the Author-Date version. The School of Law prefers OSCOLA because it has rules for citing legal texts.
Other styles that are used at Reading include Harvard, Oxford, APA, Chicago and Vancouver (numeric).