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Citing Sources: Home

This guide is to help Castleton students understand the process of documenting research for college assignments

Resources

To learn more about using and citing sources

About Citation Styles

What are citations?

Giving credit
It is important to give people credit for their work. When you cite a source you used in your research you are giving credit to the person whose idea you used or refer to. When you properly cite sources, you are demonstrating responsible scholarship.

Documenting sources
You document the sources you use in your research in a works cited list or bibliography at the end of your project.  For some projects you will include footnotes or in-text citations wherever you use someone else's idea or language.

What's in a citation
Citations include the information necessary for a reader to locate the original source.  There are conventions for different disciplines as to the format of the citations.  The American Psychological Associaton sets the conventions for APA style, for example.

Helpful books

The Complete Guide to Citing Government Information Resources
REF 808.02 C421c

Featured Resource

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab

Research and Citation Resources

Video from NCSU Libraries:  http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/tutorials/citation/


This video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States license.

Pre-formatted citations

Helpful tip:  Citations formatted for you!

OneSearch

For any item (book, article, etc.) included in OneSearch, click on the title.  Then, you can get the citation by clicking on

on the right side of the screen.  Scroll down for different citation styles.

Databases
Click on the title of the source.  Look for a link that says "Cite" or "CiteNow" or "Citation Tools."

Books
For pre-formatted citations for books, go to Worldcat.org.  Find the book you want to cite. Click on Cite/Export. Click on the + for the style you need (APA, MLA, etc.) Copy and paste the citation!

Also see
Citation tools

Keep calm

Keep calm and cite your sources

Image credit: Simon Fraser University under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 (BY-NC)

Why cite sources

Why it's important to cite your sources for academic work

  • Demonstrates your knowledge of the sources on your topic and the research you did
  • Adds credibility and support to your arguments
  • Provides your professor or reader with a research trail
  • Gives credit to the scholars whose ideas you use
  • Demonstrates responsible use of others' ideas

Citation tools in MS Word and Google Docs

Microsoft Word and Google Docs offer some tools to make citing sources within your project easier.

Questions?