How does one check for the plagiarizing of an entire bibliography section?

[marshwiggle]

When I realize a student has found a loophole in my requirements, I don't take it out on that student. I think it through, and adjust the requirements in the future to close the loophole. What's more common is that many students fail to produce what I was expecting, which indicates that I didn't communicate it well enough. So again, I'll change it for the future, or provide an example to give them the idea.

Or in this case, where the thing is a preliminary assignment, you probably just want to explain to the student what the point of the assignment was and get them to redo it. In the future, you can be more explicit about what you're looking for, or consider an annotated preliminary bibliography, as a number of people have suggested.

I never quite understand when instructors seem to want to round something up to plagiarism or cheating. If it is a marginal case, I'm always going to give the student the benefit of the doubt. Obviously, you have to deal with clear cases of plagiarism when you find them, but if something is on the edge, I'm going to give the student a lower grade for failing to cite clearly and point out that while I'm viewing it is an innocent mistake, if they aren't more careful in the future, this could get them in big trouble.

My impression is that it often has to do with a student finding a way to seem to meet the requirements with a lot less than the expected amount of effort. In other words, the kind of "outside the box" thinking to create efficiency which is rewarded outside the academy is viewed with hostility by those within it. It may be due to the fact that academics are used to being "the smartest person in the room", so the idea that a student had an idea that didn't occur to them is a blow to the ego.