Reading Database Citations
(Text-Only Version)

Slide 1

Welcome to the Reading Database Citations Presentation.

Slide 2

What is a citation?

Slide 3

A citation is a standard format for describing a publication or other information source. It should point to the source of information so that others can easily find the resource.

Slide 4

Why is it important to know how to read and cite a database record?

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First, if you are searching an online database, your search results will consist of a list of citations. If you understand the elements of a citation, you will be better able to look at your list of results and determine information about the article and decide which articles are most useful to you based on journal type or publication year.

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Second, understanding the elements of a citation is critical for giving credit to sources when you use them to write a paper.

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Not only do you want to give the original author of the work credit, but you also want to provide sources to avoid plagiarism.

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Let's take a look at a citation you might find in a database and identify its parts.

Slide 9-12

If we conduct a search in Academic Search Premier, we'll see a list of results, all of which are listed as citations.

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If we look at an individual citation, we can see the article title, authors, journal title, publication date, volume, issue, page numbers, as well as some information used by the database that we will not need.

If we decide to use this article in our research, not only will we need the information identified, but we will also need to make note of the database we were searching and the date we found the article.

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You'll need to document the citation information for every information source you use so that you can correctly cite your sources for assignments and research papers.

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If you use RefWorks, the bibliographic management tool offered by the library, you can import citations directly from many databases into RefWorks, and your reference list will be generated automatically. However, you will need to recognize and understand the parts of a citation because for some databases, you will need to manually enter the database name and retrieved information into RefWorks.

Slide 16-17

Two kinds of library materials you will use most often in your research are books and journals, so those are the sources you must recognize in citations. The easiest way to distinguish between a citation to a book and a citation to an article in a journal is to look at the publication data.

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A book citation includes the place of publication and the name of the publisher.

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A citation to an article in a journal does not contain the name and location of the publisher; instead it has the name of the journal, volume number, issue number, and page numbers.

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Citations for articles in newspapers are slightly different than those in journals and magazines.

Often a letter of the alphabet representing the section of the paper is given.

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There are many different styles for citing resources in a research paper. Some of the most common include American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA), Turabian, and Chicago.

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In general, APA is most used in the sciences and social sciences such as psychology, business and management, while MLA is more frequently used in the humanities.

Slide 23

Examine these two citations shown in APA format. Can you tell which citation is a book and which is a journal article?

If you said that the first citation is a journal article, you are right!

Notice the journal title, volume number, page numbers, and retrieved information.

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For more information on citation styles, please visit the library's Learn How To page and click on Citation Resources.

If you have questions, please contact a UMUC librarian.

Slide 25

Thank you for watching this presentation. Visit us often for all your information needs.

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