Citing Electronic Resources

Citing Research Sources...Electronic & Others

Albert Bierstadt, Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall
Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, California

The easiest way to correctly cite virtually any type of resource is to use EasyBib, a free web-based template where a student plugs in the source information, chooses the format (MLA or APA), and then has EasyBib create the bibliographic item. Another excellent citation-builder, and one that allows you to create bibliographies in MLA, APA, Chicago, or Council of Science Educators (CSE) format, is SourceAid, also a free resource.

To cite a file available on the World Wide Web, you should include the following information:

author's name (if known)
title of document, in quotation marks
title of larger source (if applicable), in italics
date of publication or revision (if known)
URL, in angle brackets
date of your access, in parentheses

When in doubt, include more information rather than less. Because of the hyperlinked nature of the World Wide Web, students sometimes do not record the bibliographic information necessary for inclusion in a paper's sources. One way to avoid problems and get the exact URL of a source is to use the Page Setup feature of your browser (Firefox, Safari, Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer) to include the title, date, and URL of a page in the header of a document that you print.

Listed below are examples of a source to include in a Footnote (or Endnote) and Bibliography. This is the Chicago or Turabian style of citation, which is preferred by many but not all history teachers. Other formats use slightly different rules, but include the same essential information.

Footnote:

1. Greg Feldmeth, "The Progressive Era," U.S. History Resources, 31 March 1998 <http://faculty.polytechnic.org/gfeldmeth/lec.prog.html> (Accessed 5 April 2004).

Bibliography:

Feldmeth, Greg. "The Progressive Era." U.S. History Resources. 31 March 1998 <http://faculty.polytechnic.org/gfeldmeth/lec.prog.html> (Accessed 5 April 2004).

An excellent source for other types of online citation examples is Research and Documentation Online by Diana Hacker. A summary of her suggestions for online citation can be found at her site.