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ENG 111 Prof. Juan Soto Franco Spring 2022

Finding the citation in OneSearch

When you find items in OneSearch, you can click on the citation tool above the short description:

Citation tool in OneSearcha

Clicking on the tool will open a box in which you can choose your citation style and then copy the citation:

Citation view in OnesSearch

Exclamation Point IconNote: Always double-check the citations generated through automatic tools, which can make errors. The Excelsior College OWL is a good, free site where you can check the full set of rules.

Finding the citation in a database

Databases may also have their own citation generators. When you click on an article, look around the page for the word "cite"; there might be an icon using "" quotation marks.

Academic Search Complete Cite Button

 

The location of the cite button varies from database to database.

 

Good places to look include the side of the screen: 

 

 

 

--or the top of the screen when you have the article open.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Screenshot of citation generated by Gale Ebooks with citation style options

Choose your citation style--MLA for this assigment.

 

 

 


Exclamation Point IconNote: Always double-check the citations generated through automatic tools, which can make errors. The Excelsior College OWL is a good, free site where you can check the full set of rules.

Creating your own citations + MLA citation rules

A citation tells your reader some basic information about the document you're discussing. It should include:

  • the name of the author who wrote it;
  • the title;
  • if it's a small thing in a bigger thing--like an article in a newspaper, or a chapter in a book--the title of the bigger thing, and the page numbers that belong to the smaller thing's part of it;
  • the date it was published;
  • and depending on the kind of thing it is, you may also have to include the name of the company that published it, or the address to find it online.

Citations of any "style" all include this information, but the order and punctuation might vary a bit. MLA is usually the style used by people writing about literature, so most college English classes use MLA style.

Whenever there is no "cite" button to click, you can write your own citation. 

The following examples show you the correct order of information, as well as the periods, commas, quotation marks, and use of capitalization and italics for MLA style citations: 

The basic order in MLA is:

Last name, First name [if there is an author--for government documents, you can use the name of the government agency.]  "Title of document." Title of Larger Publication if There Is One, Date Month Year, URL.

If your article is part of a periodical (something like a journal or magazine that gets published on a regular basis) you should also include the volume and issue number.

Here is an example of a government document citation:

United States Department of Health and Human Services. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Specifications for Medical Examinations of Underground Coal Miners." The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 9 Jan. 2012, www.cdc.gov/niosh/docket/archive/docket225.html

In the Black Freedom Struggle database, there is no "cite" button so you will have to create your own citations.

screenshot of bibliographic information from Black Freedom Struggle database

For example, if you have this information:

Your citation would be:

DuBois, W.E.B. "An Essay Toward the History of the Black Man in the Great War." The Crisis, vol 18, no. 2, 1919, http://blackfreedom.proquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/dubois20.pdf