Electronic Documentation Guidelines

 

Below are the methods for documenting two very common types of "electronic" sources--an article (or book) found via EBSCOHost (or its ilk) and a web site. My source is the 9th edition of The Little, Brown Handbook.

 

For a full-text article found via EBSCOHost, Lexis-Nexis, etc.:

 

Parenthetical (textual) citation:

Remember that these sources genuinely exist in print; you may have found them in an electronic form, but they are out there, in a book or journal. Thus it is not completely fair to label them as "electronic" sources--they aren't limited to that medium. You just found them that way.

 

Usually you provide author and page number in your parenthetical citation. This is possible when EBSCOHost clearly indicates the page number, which, thankfully, it often does. When a page number is not clearly indicated, then you can indicate paragraph or screen number (abbreviate "paragraphs" as "par." or "pars." depending on whether you cite from one or more paragraphs).

 

Works Cited entry:

Again, these documents exist in print. Your Works Cited entry will thus be much like the form you would use as if you had found the actual print document. You'll just be adding some additional information about the electronic source. See the example below for an entry that exists in a print journal yet was found via EBSCOHost:

Format:  (NOTE: The second and subsequent lines should be indented!)

Last name, First. "Article name." Magazine/Journal where originally published volume.issue (date published): pages. Name of the database. Name of the service, i.e., EBSCOHost. Name of college, name of college's library. Date accessed <URL of service's home page>.

 

Sample:  (NOTE: The second and subsequent lines should be indented!)

Bruce, Alexander M. "The Development of Orthographic Wh- in early Middle English."  Journal of English Linguistics 25.2 (June, 1997): 97-101. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCOHost. Florida Southern College, Roux Library. 3 January 2005 <http://www.epnet.com>.

 

For a Web Site:

Parenthetical (textual) citation:

See below for the sort of information you might have. Provide the author (or title of web site if the author is not given) and the paragraph or screen number (as per above).

 

Works Cited entry:

Here's the information you want; items that are in BOLD are items you definitely will have:

• Author of web site if it's a personal site and not a scholarly project or professional site.
• Title of Web Site (even if you have to "make it up" by choosing the largest headline on the page; put in italics as it's a larger work comprised of smaller ones-the web pages)
• Editor of the web site if it's not a scholarly project or professional site.
• Date the Web Site was posted or updated (its "publication" date; in parentheses, as you would for the date of a journal)
• Name of any organization or institution that sponsors the site.
• Date You Accessed the Site
• Web Address (Complete! Use < > to enclose it.)

Sample:  (NOTE: The second and subsequent lines should be indented!)

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.  Hamlet Essay. (2000-2005). Absolute Shakespeare. 14 Aug 2007. <http://absoluteshakespeare.com/guides/hamlet/essay/hamlet_essay.htm>.

(If your computer automatically underlines web addresses, we'll deal with it.)

 

Alexander M. Bruce (2005)

updated: C. Eskin (2007)