Armacost Library: CREATIVE WRITING: How to Cite Your Sources

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Understand why you need to cite your sources
Find online and physical library citation style guides
Access a free, open source citation management tool

Citing Sources

MLA Handbook
Publication Date: 2021
Online Resources

The Chicago Manual of Style
Online Resources:
Chicago-Style Citation Quick Guide

Fairfield University: Notes-Bibliography Style

Fairfield University: Author-Date Style

A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 9th ed.
ISBN: 9780226494425
Publication Date: 2018
Online Resources:
Turabian Quick Guide -
Notes-Bibliography and Author-Date
Turabian (Chicago) Style -
Notes with Bibliography for Humanities

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
Unfortunately the APA does not enable libraries to loan their ebook.

Online Resources:
Fairfield University APA Guide

APA Style Guide to Electronic References

The ACS Style Guide
Online Resources:
Ch. 14 from the ACS Style Guide

ACS Style Guide

What Citations Reveal & How They Impact Us

"When you cite a source, you show how your voice enters into an intellectual conversation and you demonstrate your link to the community within which you work. Working with sources can inspire your own ideas and enrich them, and your citation of these sources is the visible trace of that debt." (Yale College Writing Center)

When you cite a source you also reveal whose voices and thoughts are included in these intellectual conversations. Thus, who you read and what you cite can help strengthen diversity and equity in scholarship.

We are a collective of Black women of first-generation, queer, working class and poor, immigrant, and disabled experience and we formed out of the necessity to cite, (re)claim, and honor Black women's work. #CiteBlackWomen
— Cite Black Women. (@citeblackwomen) September 9, 2020

Why Cite?

To Connect Ideas | To Acknowledge a Community of Contributors | To Read & Cite Inclusively

Featured style guide

MLA Handbook
Publication Date: 2021
Online Resources

Additional online citation guides

When citing scores, images, recordings and other less-traditional sources, start with the style recommended by your professor. Determine what rules pertain to your situation and adapt them as necessary. If the information provider has specified how they want their source cited, try to follow those instructions. These online guides to citing specific information formats may help:

Trans citation practices -- A quick-and-dirty guideline While not a formal guide, the author helps researchers practice their good intentions. Main takeaways: style guide rules may cause harm, follow the author's lead, and don't out people by deadnaming.
Citing American FactFinder Tables and Maps
Citing Audio from the University of Cincinnati
Citing Cartographic Material from ACMLA From the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives (ACMLA). Provides citation examples for a variety of resource types such as software, satellite imagery, maps from theses or dissertations, etc.
Citing Data and Statistics from Michigan State
Citing Data from IASSIST From the International Association for Social Science Information Services & Technology (IASSIST). Check out their Quick Guide to Data Citation. Identifies a core set of elements to be included in citations, and provides examples in ALA, MLA, and Chicago styles.
Citing Images from the University of Cincinnati Examples of how to cite images in MLA and APA style, from University of Cincinatti Libraries.
Citing Maps and Atlases from Macalester Guidelines taken from Clark's, Larsgaard's, and Teague's Cartographic Citations: A Style Guide
Citing Maps and Geospatial Data from ScholarsPortal This resources points out the need for researchers to carefully consider the best way to reference the work of others, and suggests a way to balance the need to reference sources without inundating readers with too much information.
Citing Musical sources from Cal State East Bay Style guide for musical sources developed by Cal State East Bay, based on Chicago style.
How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications This guide will help you create links between your academic publications and the underlying datasets, so that anyone viewing the publication will be able to locate the dataset and vice versa. It provides a working knowledge of the issues and challenges involved, and of how current approaches seek to address them.

Recommended citation helper

Zotero is a free, open source citation management program maintained by the nonprofit Corporation for Digital Scholarship.

Designed for students and scholars, Zotero makes collecting, managing and citing sources easier.

The software consists of three parts:

A browser plugin that you click to collect citations from a library catalog, database or website
A database to store and manage your citations
Icons in your word processor that you click to insert a citation or works cited list.

Like any citation management program, Zotero is not perfect. It knows enough about citation styles to give you a good first draft of your citatoin sand works cited list. However, it relies on information found in databases and websites which are not always accurate.

I recommend that you double-check citations and works cited lists created with Zotero against the official style guide. Make sure you know the type of source you are trying to cite and check the capitalization and punctuation carefully.

Armacost Library has created this guide to help you learn to use Zotero:

Zotero: A Guide on Getting Started
by Emily Croft Last Updated Sep 18, 2020 188 views this year

Key points

Citing sources lets you indicate whose ideas your own work draws upon, and give those individuals credit for their contributions.
The MLA style guide is only available in the physical library. If you're not able to access it, try an online guide to MLA style.
Zotero is a free, open source tool you can use to manage your citations.

See the "Using information ethically" chapter in the Introduction to Library Research in the Arts to learn more about ethical research practices, including inclusive citing practices and bibliodiversity.