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FS 30: Activism in Communities of Study: Cite Your Sources

This is a research guide to accompany Dr. Althea Sircar's first-year seminar.

Why Cite?

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

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.

 

Citing Sources

Additional Online Citation Guides

When citing maps and other less-traditional sources, start with the citation style (e.g., APA, MLA) recommended by your professor, then build or modify as necessary. As the researcher, you'll have to decide how you'll cite your resources and which citation elements you'll need to include. Providers of information sometimes specify how they want their sources cited; check to see if such instructions are available. 

Citation Helpers

Citation Generators can be great time-savers, but their accuracy is only as good as the information you enter and they will still make mistakes. For best results, identify the type of source you are citing, accept that most generators only cite commonly used sources, and double-check every generated citation.

  • Zotero can help you manage your citations. View these guides from the Armacost Library (video-based), GTU, and information on  which is particularly useful to researchers managing 100s of sources.

  • KnightCite helps auto-generate citations. Be sure to double-check these.