Works Cited & References
Citations allow you to give credit to the person or publication where you gathered your information. While you are expected to draw your own conclusions and analyze information based on your research, the core information at the heart of that analysis came from somewhere. If you don't say where you got it, there's a good chance you're plagiarizing!
The most common styles of citation are MLA (Modern Language Association), which is most commonly used in Humanities courses such as Communication Arts, and APA (American Psychological Association), which is most commonly used in the sciences because of its focus on date-specific citing. Other styles, such as Chicago/Turabian are also mentioned in the examples below.
Citation Help
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Sixth Edition by Joseph Gibaldi. The absolute authority on MLA style! Check out a copy from our library. Find it in nonfiction at: 808 GIB. We have four copies available for checkout.
Publication manual of the American Psychological Association, Fifth Edition by the American Psychological Association, 2001. Like the MLA manual, this is the absolute authority on APA. If there is a question about whether a citation is right or wrong in APA, this is the final answer. We have to copies at 808 PUB available for checkout.
Get it Write! Handbook Newly updated to reflect changes in MLA and APA! Communication Arts teachers at all three LSR-7 high schools give a version of this publication to incoming freshman. This has great examples of common citations such as MLA and APA. This link takes you to a PDF file of the entire book.
Purdue University's OWL (Online Writing Lab) Website is widely respected and a great resource for citation help in MLA, APA, Chicago, and ASA formats, as well as for general writing help on a wide variety of styles.
University of Washington's Citation Game: Review your citation skills with or without your style manuals to see how well you do! (Teachers: see the Tiger Idea Warehouse for more activities related to citations).
A word of caution: While these tools do their best to create accurate citations, errors in entering the information can lead to errors in the actual citation. Knowledge of what your citation is supposed to look like helps tremendously (see links above) when using online citation generators. If your teacher/professor insists on perfect citations, get to know the printed style manual before relying on these online citation tools!
EasyBib: The district subscribes to this citation tool! MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian. Check with a librarian to get the 'coupon code' for full access to EasyBib. You can create citations for free, but using the code eliminates sidebar ads and allows you to compile citations into a full Works Cited page.
NoodleBib Express: From "Free Software Tools" choose the bottom link, NoodleBib Express. This tool allows you to easily create single citations that you can copy and paste into your Works Cited page for MLA, APA, and Chicago styles. Click the blue clarification links to help determine what you need to use. Start over with each new citation. This is Mr. Russell's pick for citation generators.
Citation Machine: This free website offers citation generation for MLA, APA, Chicago, and Turabian styles. This is Ms. Stuart's pick for citation generators.
BibMe: a free Website that requires you to register, but once you do that you can save bibliographies to download into your paper. Created and launched in 2007 by students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
eTurabian: as the name suggests, this free Website helps you create references in the Turabian format.