MUS 600: Musicology: Citing in Chicago style & Zotero

Many of us first learned to cite our sources because we were required to for class. However, citing sources is not simply about following rules. There are two main principles behind the convention for citing sources.

1. When we cite sources, we are being honest with readers about the origin of the ideas that we present. We are giving credit to the efforts of other people who have researched these topics and recognizing them for their work. We also uphold the academic honesty standards of the University of Redlands.
2. When we cite sources, we are helping our readers learn more about our topic. Citations show your readers where they can go to learn more about the topic. This is a convenience to them and a way to increase the visibility of high quality resources that more people should know about.

All citations have some common elements, regardless of what kind of document you are trying to cite and what style you are citing in. The most common elements are:

1. The title of the source
2. Who created the source
3. When the source was published
4. Who published the source (e.g. a publishing company or government agency)
5. How to get to the source (if it's published online)
6. Specific page numbers (if you are directly quoting a source)

Each document that you cite will have attributes corresponding to multiple rules in the style guide. For example, you might be citing a document that is a book, written by two authors, and was published as an ebook that you found in a library database. There are rules covering each of these elements and you will need to consider all four of them in constructing your citation.

Citation style guides have excellent indexes. Use the index to look up each rule that pertains to the document you are trying to cite and then put them all together, using an example citation as your starting point.

Learn to use Zotero: free, open source citation management software compatible with major browsers and word processors.

Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago) is used in many social science disciplines. It offers authors the choice between putting citations in parenthesis or in footnotes to avoid disrupting the flow of the authors' own ideas. Chicago style emphasizes the authors' names and year of publication.