Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due

Objective: Students will be able to collect the appropriate information to give credit to the creator of a source.

What a great time to do research! The number of available books, articles, and websites is growing each day. But so much information can make ideas hard to find again.

So, it is very important to take notes on the resources you find while you are doing research.

More importantly, taking good notes will also help you avoid plagiarism by giving credit to the original author.

There are certain pieces of information that you will need to find and write down. These items may be different depending on your resource and/or the citation style you will be using to create your Bibliography or Works Cited page.

The way you will collect the information will depend on you or your teacher. The required information can be recorded in different ways: on note cards, forms, or on the computer in a blank document.

There are several different styles used to format papers and create citations: MLA, APA, Chicago, and many more. It is best to ask your teacher which style that he/she prefers. For this lesson, MLA will be used.

INFORMATION THAT YOU NEED TO NOTE!

BOOKS - Here are 5 critical things to write down:

• Author(s) or editor(s)

• Title (and subtitle)

• Publisher

• Place of publication (city & state abbreviation)

• Copyright date

If you are holding the book in your hands, you can find this information on the first few pages.

Author, Title, Publisher, Place of Publication and Copyright Date

Or, you can find it on the library catalog

record.

ARTICLES - Print (P) and Online (O)

Here are the critical things to write down:• Article Title (P & O)• Author(s) (P & O)• Title of the Newspaper/Magazine/Journal (P & O)• Publication Date (at least the year) (P & O)• Volume and Issue Numbers (if available) (P & O)• Page Numbers (P & O)• Article Database Name (O)• Date Article Accessed (O)

Article Title Magazine Title Volume/Issue

Publication Date

Author’s Name

Page Numbers

Database Title

Finding citation information for your source when it is a website can be tricky sometimes. You may need to look in more than one place on the home page to find what you’re looking for.

WEBSITE: Here’s what you need to write down:

• Title of website• Author/Organization (whomever is responsible for

the website)

• Date (when it was created or updated)

• URL (MLA 7 does not require this, but your teacher may!)

• Date (when you accessed/looked at the website)

WEB IMAGES: (yes, even these!)

Here’s what you need to write down:• Title or description of image• Artist/photographer• Title of website• Publisher (whoever is responsible for the website)

• Date (when it was created or updated) AND

• Date (when you accessed/looked at the website)

• URL (MLA 7 does not require this, but your teacher may!)

• In slideshows, the citation should be next to the image.

You will need all of the information you collected in order to create a correct and accurate Bibliography or Works Cited page.

Summing Up

Taking good notes will help you avoid plagiarism, give credit to the original source, and help you and your readers find the resource again.

A more detailed overview of MLA Citations is presented in Module 3.