Whenever you take a quote paraphrase or even when you are summarizing someone’s ideas or words you need to cite the source in the bibliography and you need to make a note of it in your text.
In-text citation MLA style means you put the author’s last name and page number in parenthesis at the end of the sentence.
APA style citations in text require more. You need to put the author’s last name, the year the work was created and the page number. The title of the document should be abbreviated to the first letters of each word if there is no author or if you have more than one work by that author.
Example of MLA: (Jones, 23).
Example of APA: (Jones, 2008, p.23)
S. Beck created an interesting website regarding electronic websites available on the free web. Remember information in database, directory, gateway, portal, clearing house or repository has been evaluated and mined from the web for quality. If it’s a free standing website or part of a larger website ask yourself about quality and authenticity of the site. Documents can be altered; images can be doctored to make something appear different from what it actually is. Be careful. Consume web resources wisely.
http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html
Beck, Susan. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: or, Why It’s a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources. 1997. http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html
First, identify the important concepts of your topic.
Second, identify subject headings for your terms or Free-text searches are usually done through the “Keyword” search option.
The best approach is to determine if your terms are in the thesaurus of the database you are using. Some systems do that checking automatically; others require the user to seek out the thesaurus. If your terms are not in the thesaurus, then try them as keywords.
Next, decide how you will combine the terms together. Combine terms with Boolean operators. There are basically three Boolean operators: AND, OR, NOT.
In the example, you might prepare your search this way:
television OR television viewing
AND violence
AND children
You are now ready to enter this information into the database search box.
Searching Skills: terminology and concepts; the search process; tutorials. 2003-2008. Kent State. Accessed on 7 August 2008. www.library.kent.edu/page/10868.
This 45 minute tutorial was designed for students at University of Wyoming. Yet, this information is applicable to our class so feel free to browse it and see what you can learn.
http://tip.uwyo.edu/
