A citation contains elements (e.g. author, date, title) that uniquely identify a
A citation contains elements (e.g. author, date, title) that uniquely identify a resource. You will primarily find citations in the works cited or reference section of a paper or book. They may also appear on websites, your course syllabus, or other materials provided by your instructor. Your instructors expect you to include citations in your papers to tell them where your ideas came from. Scholars out in the wider world include citations in their work for the same purpose. You can use their citations to trace back where their ideas originated, the same way your instructors check your work.
We’ve talked about using field searching when you are starting your research without a specific item in mind. You can also leverage field searching to find an item you already know key information about! For example, you may have a full or partial citation for an item you’re looking for, or you may be interested in finding a research article that is mentioned in the news. The pieces of this citation correspond with specific fields in an item record. Note that different citation styles (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.) will have different rules or ways of representing common elements of citations, such as author name, title of article or book, and so on. What’s important for this chapter is to focus on recognizing these citation elements rather than the specific rules for a given style. Below are some examples of citations and how you can find the resources they describe.
Book
Here is a citation for a book in Chicago style:
Frank, Frederick S. The First Gothics: A Critical Guide to the English Gothic Novel. Garland Publishing, 1987.
The best way to read this book quickly (and for free) is to check whether the library has it. To find this out, search for the book’s title in Quick Search. You can also use the Title field in Advanced Search. In this example, the book’s title is italicized.
If the book you’re searching for has a simple title, like World History, you will want to add the author’s name to your search. To do this in Advanced Search, add another line to your search and select the Author/creator option. This will help filter out books with the same title by other authors. In most citation styles, the author’s name is the very first piece of a book citation.
Once you’ve searched for the book title and author’s name together, your search should find the book, as long as it is available in the ISU Library. Quick Search may also display reviews for the book in your results. If you want to filter these out, you can limit your format type to Books.
Book chapter
Here is a citation for a book chapter in MLA style:
Neves, Marcos Fava, and Luciano Thomé e Castro, “Inserting small holders into sustainable value chains.” In Handbook of Business Practices and Growth in Emerging Markets, ed. Satyendra Singh. (Singapore: World Scientific, 2010), 235-253.
A book chapter citation contains all the elements of a book citation, plus some extra pieces that indicate the citation is