6. The Information Landscape: Thinking About Traditionally Preformatted Citations

This video series focuses on the "information landscape" as it pertains to college research. It is a work-in-progress. Your feedback is welcome.

Where can I find the citation?

Once upon a time...

Students could actually memorize the various citation formats they needed to use in their works cited lists,

because, once upon a time, they didn't have to cite sources like

a website,

an article from an online database,

a blog posting, a tweet,

or an audio podcast.

Once upon a time...

Students turned to style guides, such as

The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

or Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association,

to help them create these citations.

Style guides are still indispensable, of course,

but now students can often take a shortcut

by using the citation tools built into research databases,

such as Academic Search Premier or Academic Onefile.

These research databases offer a feature that allows students to generation citations

for the sources they discover inside these databases.

From there, all the student has to do

is copy and paste them into a works cited list.

To be on the safe side, however,

students should double-check preformatted citations with an official style guide.

I want use this website

as a source for my research paper,

but I can't find the citation.

That's because are working with a website you have found on the open web,

not a source from a research database, such as Academic Onefile.

The websites you track down using Google or Yahoo

are not going to come with preformatted citations.

You will need to create them for yourself.

However, if you use a research database,

such as Academic Onefile,

there is a good chance it will come with a citation tool that will save you a lot of time.

But my teacher really wants me to use this website.

I found it on Google.

Then you will need to format the citation on your own.

You will need to go over your style guide to figure which elements to include in your citation.

For example, here's a website.

I'm going to turn to this online cheat sheet to look for guidelines on how to format the citation.

That sounds like a lot of work.

College researchers have always had to format their own citations

for books and print and articles by following a specific style guide.

Now they also need to think about citations for content from the open web,

as well books and articles in research databases.

Again, most databases offer citation tools to make it easier for students to cite their sources.

Yet if you find a website through Google or Yahoo,

you are on your own.