How do I document my sources?

This page last updated 02/03/2008

This is a difficult question as it will depend on the citation format for your assignment. Check with your instructor or research advisor for specifics on the format of references. In general, you will need the following information to properly document online references (and you'll need similar information for print resources as well):

The author(s) of the reference. For journal articles, this is usually clear, but in other cases it may be a little more difficult to determine. This may be an individual or it may be an organization. In some cases it may not be provided at all. Look for a copyright notice to find this information.

The title of the reference. For articles and books this is usually provided clearly. For web sites, this should be easy to find, but it is often very difficult. When you open a particular site and look at your browser window, the title of the page should be displayed at the top. However, many web authors forget about this aspect of the web page and don't make any descriptive titles, so you'll see something like "New Page". In this case you should read the actual page, as there will often be a descriptive title at the top that you can use.

The date the reference was written. Again for books and journal articles this is generally clear. For web sites this is often difficult to find as well, but if there is a copyright date, or a date that the site was last updated, you can probably use that. If there is no clear date provided, you might be able to use the phrase "no date provided", which is often abbreviated as "n.d.". In such a case, you should check with your instructor for the appropriate way to document this.

Publication information on the reference - this will depend on the type of reference you are using.

Journals - you need the journal title, the volume, and the page numbers of the article.

Books - you need the name of the publisher, the publication city, and sometimes the number of pages.

Web sites - You need two items for a web site

You need the URL for the web site. URL stands for Uniform Resource Locater, which is a fancy way of describing the address of the web site. You need to have the full URL for every site you visit. For example, if you look at three different pages on the CDC website, you need the URL for each page. You can not simply list www.cdc.gov as the URL. You also have to be careful about this one because many web pages use "frames", where you click on buttons in one part of the screen, new information appears in another part. The problem with this is that the URL listed for the page doesn't change when you are using frames. This means that you don't always know what the correct URL really is:

This shows one page on a frames site:

Frames Page

This image shows another page from the same site. Notice that the address hasn't changed:

Second frames page

To see the actual page you are viewing, if you open the frame in a new window, you'll find the actual URL (this option is accessed in Windows by right-clicking on the button and choosing "Open link in new window"). After doing that, you will see the same page, but now the URL is corrected:

Frames page with correct URL

Date you accessed the site - this is the last date you physically viewed the site. You should keep very good records of this information and update it any time you go back to the site. Because the web can be changed a great deal in one day, your record of the date may be your only evidence of a particular site existing! You may also want to consider printing out any particularly important pages because you never know when they'll disappear.

There may be additional information required by your instructor - make sure you know exactly what information is going to be required before you start searching.

Here are some sites with information on how to document online references

	APA style - page produced by the APA that documents rules for using APA style.
	Citation styles - page produced by a textbook publisher that provides information on different citation styles (including APA, MLA, CBE, and Chicago style).
	Son of Citation Machine - this is a web site that will make references for you in a specified format. WARNING: this site will not necessarily produce citations in the exact format you are required to use - always verify that the format is correct!