Citation Queries

I'm putting this here as a separate page so that it doesn't get lost among the comments...
These are answers to questions I have been asked about citation following the library tutorial. Please feel free to ask more questions below and I will include answers here.

1a) What counts as an online source?
  • online primary sources (through reputable sites like Internet Medieval Sourcebook)
  • online journal articles
  • online books (eg. via the library)
  • online images (make sure you understand what they are/where & when they come from)

1b) What doesn't count as an online source?
  • Wikipedia
  • any secondary sources that are not peer reviewed (blogs, newspaper opinion, documentaries)
    • in fact, the peer review criterion also applies to secondary sources in print!


2) How should one cite information obtained from a citation in another source?
  • This is called secondary citation. In general I am not a fan. Where possible I expect you to go back to the original source. However, when absolutely necessary:
  • In your text indicate that you are making reference to an author whose work you haven't read, for example: Rodinelli, cited in Potts, describes the stages of a project... .1
    Then in your footnote, provide the details of the book you actually read (i.e. Potts). This reference should also then be listed in your bibliography.
3) Formatting advice on How to Add a Footnote and How to Double-space in Word documents has been added to the Essay Resources Toolbar.

4) Your bibliographyshould have separate subheadings for primary and secondary sources. Sort alphabetically within each section.

5) Some instructions about using Word for essays, inserting footnotes, etc.:
click for higher resolution

3 comments:

medievaleurope said...

Hi all,
Just alerting you to the queries page where I have added some new information about using Word. Students in some of my classes needed advice on how to insert footnotes, etc., and it may also be useful to you!

medievaleurope said...

I've had a query about citing Black Death primary sources in the reader. This is a bit of an unusual situation because those final few primary sources in the reader have apparently been used in this unit for so many years that no one remembers the original publication details! (Whoops!) In this case, cite it using the format for a book chapter or section, where the "chapter" author and details relate to the primary text, and the "book" title and details relate to the reader itself. That's as close as you can get in this instance to the correct format.

medievaleurope said...

For material on DVD:
If it's a film, the reference should include, as a minimum, title, director, distributor, date, and format, e.g.:

The Grapes of Wrath, dir. by John Ford (20th Century Fox, 1940) [on DVD].

If it has a serial/product/recording number, it goes in the backets between the distributor and the year.

If it's a book or similar material published on DVD/CD-ROM, cite it as a normal book (or similar) and add "[on DVD]" or "[on CD]" after the round brackets, as above, and before any page reference.