Citations from Start to Finish: 1. Getting citations

It's important to keep track of your research and citations right from the start of your research process.  You don't want to waste hours trying to find that one article that was just perfect, but that you forgot to save.  The easiest way to keep track of your resources is to save them in some way: 

• Databases allow you to email their articles to yourself, which will give you the full article and a link back to it.  It's a good idea to do this with anything you think might be useful.
• For an article on the web, save the full URL and at least the title and author of the piece.  Make it easy to go back and check on your source.
• Keep the full information about any book you use; the college library's catalog will let you email it to yourself.

Learn more about keeping track of your resources with this video:

One of the great things about using library databases and resources is that you don't usually have to write your citations yourself!  Most databases will give you citations in your choice of format.  Be careful and check that the citation is complete and accurate.  Watch this video to learn about grabbing citations from different databases:

There will still be resources you use that do not come with ready-made citations, and you'll have to write them yourself.  There is plenty of help available for this process, and it's not so hard; you just figure out what template you need and then fill in the blanks.

Check out our complete MLA guide to find information about MLA citations.

Take a look at our APA style guide to find information about APA citations.

Read our Chicago style guide to find information about Chicago citations.  (This is for author-date only.)

For even more complete information, go to the Purdue OWL website, which has plenty on MLA, APA, and Chicago's Notes-Bibliography style.