Library Research 101: Start Your Research

Citation is listing the sources you're using when you're writing a research paper.  Citing these sources is important because it lets the reader of your paper know which ideas come from the sources you used, and which come from you.  Citing your sources also helps you avoid accidental plagiarism by giving credit to the other scholars whose work you're building on.

Citation usually happens in two places--at the end of your project, where you have a complete and detailed list of all the sources you've used (often called a bibliography, works cited page, or reference list), and in the body of the project, either by footnote or parenthetical citation.  In-text citation lets your readers know which sentences are based on ideas by other sources; citation lists at the end of your paper give the full information for your sources, so that your readers can find the sources you used if they want to.

Though different citation formats are structured in different ways, they contain the same information--author and title of a work, year of publication, and so on.

American Psychological Association (APA)--the most commonly used citation style at the college level, used for social sciences (psychology, sociology, education, etc.), some sciences, and other subjects

Modern Language Association (MLA)--the most commonly used citation style at the high school level, but also used for some subjects in college, especially humanities fields (literature, languages, etc.).

Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago)--used for some humanities fields (such as history) and some social science fields (such as business).  There are two different types of Chicago style citation, notes-bibliography and author-date, so If you have to use Chicago citation style for a project, make sure you ask your professor which one you should use!

For other forms of citation, see our Cite Your Sources library guide.  For information about citation managers, see our Citation Managers guide.

...you can always ask your subject specialist librarian for help.  We'll be glad to hear from you!