The Right Cite | Library Blog - Indiana University East

So, it’s a third of the way into the semester, and you have some papers coming due. Research papers. And you need to cite your sources. Well, there are many helpful aids to doing that. We have the style manuals at the library’s front desk that you can use. And we, and our colleagues in the Writing Lab, are glad to help you figure them out. There’s the Online Writing Lab at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/, which is great for getting you through MLA or APA style. And there’s RefWorks, a program we subscribe to that will help you generate whole reference lists.

But for a lot of things, references are even simpler than all that! For many of our databases, citations can be generated automatically with a single click of your mouse button. From http://www.iue.edu/library/research/articles.php, scroll down and click on EBSCOHost Databases, ProQuest Central Databases, or WorldCat. Do a quick search for anything you’d like. Open an article. Then, click this button:

In EBSCO: ebsco cite this

In ProQuest: proquest cite this

In WorldCat: worldcat cite this

And Presto! The Citation for the article is created, in all the most common styles! APA, MLA, Chicago, and more! All you need to do is highlight the one you want, copy it, and paste it into your paper!

EBSCO and ProQuest together account for about 2/3 of all of our electronic journal access. And ALL of our books and videos are listed in WorldCat. So, instant citations will cover a huge amount of the stuff you’ll need to use.

It’s still worthwhile to proofread these citations. The computer is very good at some things – italicizing the right things, putting periods and commas and parentheses in the right place. But it isn’t always so good at recognizing proper nouns, so especially double-check its capitalization! Instant citations like these are amazing tools, but your brain is always even better!

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