Dos & Don'ts

Generally speaking, you should not cite sources that were written in a language you do not understand. Yes, there are auto-translation tools, but these can be clunky and miss (or misrepresent) nuance in the text. There is a reason why Google Translate hasn't replaced paid human translators.

If you do speak/read the language of the source, it is recommended that you still contact the instructor to ask if you may use the source. They may allow it, or they may not! (They may prefer you only use sources they themselves can read if they choose to do so.)

MLA cautions:

if you are relying on Google Translate, we recommend that you alert your instructor as early as possible. If you are unable to talk with your instructor, indicate in an endnote in your paper that you have used Google’s translation tool.

Keep in mind, though, that Google Translate does not always translate accurately. As the Princeton University professor Simon Gikandi notes, “When I ask Google to translate ‘Call an ambulance’ into Swahili, it suggests ‘beat up the vehicle that carries sick people’” (qtd. in Jaschik).

Even if you want to, let's say, take it easy on the annotations, they must still be your original work.

Books usually offer publisher-provided summaries to help people decide to buy them. Do not copy/paste this summary (in whole or in part) into your assignment!

Journal articles often have abstracts to help researchers decide whether it's worth reading. Do not copy/paste this abstract (in whole or in part) into your assignment!

What counts as original?

Simply swapping in synonyms does not create originality. There is no functional difference between "The cat is sad" and "The feline is forlorn." No real thought or effort was applied, which is the whole point of academic work. (And even non-academic work, because, yes, that would still qualify as plagiarism by most standards.)

Do not copy/paste a book summary or journal abstract and then run a thesaurus over it!

Think of this as if you were telling a friend about your sources. "I read this article recently. It was about ___. I thought it was interesting because ___. I wish it had talked more about ___." Then just polish it up to remove the personal pronouns and make it a little more formal and voila!

Your research resource guide is basically just an annotated bibliography, and that means it's a Works Cited list but with a paragraph of justification after each source. You can spend some time summarizing* the source, but you also need to make sure you're explicitly stating how that source helps! Why this one and not some other source? Why this one in addition to the other ones?  What does that source do to help you explain your artist?

*Note: the summary must also be original to you. You may not use the publisher-provided summary in your work.

Bad example:

“Timeline.” Andrew Wyeth, andrewwyeth.com/timeline/. Accessed 15 Oct. 2020.
Timeline of Wyeth's art and life.

Better example:

“Timeline.” Andrew Wyeth, andrewwyeth.com/timeline/. Accessed 15 Oct. 2020.
From the official Andrew Wyeth website, this timeline documents Wyeth’s life in both personal and professional capacities, from his birth to his being enrolled in art school, his marriage and his father’s death, and also inserts the start and completions of major pieces he painted, as well as exhibitions his work was displayed in. This page is the most informative about the artist on this site: no other narrative biography is given. An image gallery provides an overview of his works for browsing.

Calculated risk time:

Not that your librarian would condone skipping parts of an assignment... but... if you're very confident about the accuracy of the rest of your assignment, the annotations altogether are only worth 5 of 100 points. The most important thing is the quality and quantity of the sources your select (80/100). So if you're in a bit of a rush, then honestly, the annotations are an easy place to slack off a little without much cost to you overall. (Note: this means do an overly-simple job or skip it, but do not copy/paste/tweak publisher-provided summaries to take the place of proper annotations. That is plagiarism. You'd be better off skipping it than plagiarising.)

On the other hand, everything can add up: if you botch the annotations and the citations and the formatting and having a scholarly source, suddenly an 80 is the highest you can earn. Do the best you can at all parts of the assignment to protect yourself!

Also, annotated bibliographies are a pretty common assignment. Might as well practice at this while the stakes are lower!

You're required to locate several book sources for the resource guide assignment. Yes, we know you're not reading a stack of books cover-to-cover, and no, we don't actually expect you to! Honest.

That said, you should have slightly more familiarity with a book you're citing than the publisher's blurb about it. (Also, your annotation for that source needs to be more than just a restatement of that blurb!)

Use the Library E-Books!

• Full text is available!
• You can "search inside" to find all the places your artist is mentioned!
• Prewritten citations are available! (The citation will indicate which collection the book is in, too.)

How could you lose?

Distant Second Choice: Google Books

IF there is a decent preview of the book, then sure, this could work. If a book has 0 pages available to preview, then, no, this is no more helpful than looking at the Amazon listing for it.

What You're Not Citing

• Amazon or B&N or other book vendor webpages
• Publisher pages
• Book reviews (online or in JSTOR)

A book citation (what you need) is not the same as the citation for a webpage about that book. And let's be real, it makes it obvious you didn't dig into the content at all.

In your librarian's experience, websites offering pre-written citations are offering terrible/incorrect citations. They're either out-of-date, just plain wrong, or not adhering to an actual citation style.

Common example, The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History offers great essays! They also offer a citation for each essay at the end, and you must edit it!

For example, the citation for the article on Art Nouveau is provided as:

Their version:

Gontar, Cybele. “Art Nouveau.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/artn/hd_artn.htm (October 2006)

Correct MLA version:

Gontar, Cybele. “Art Nouveau.” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 2006, www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/artn/hd_artn.htm.

What changed:

• No "In (site name)." We use "in..." in APA style for anthology books, but not MLA.
• Comma after the website name, not a period.
• No place of publication.
• The year the site was established is not officially part of the site name and does not otherwise need to be included.
• Comma after the publisher.
• The date of publication comes before the url, and we can (and should) abbreviate the month.
• No http:// on the url in MLA.
• Period at the end.

This is just one example, of course -- and of course, most websites don't offer you any citation at all! Any premade citation should be double-checked against an MLA resource like our online guide.

This class uses MLA format for its assignments. MLA is one of the common style guides used by scholars. A style guide is simply the set of rules about what your document should look like so that you're both internally consistent with yourself but also consistent with your peers.

You can download a premade Word document to use as well as view examples of citation on our MLA guide.

Document Set-Up

• 1" margins (these days, that should be the default)
• Times New Roman font
• Font size 12
• Double-spaced
• No extra space between paragraphs or around the title of your paper
• Inside the header (top margin), upper-right corner: your last name and page number (e.g. Smith 1)
• Four-line heading (does not go inside the margin: it takes up space on page 1):
  • Your Name
  • Prof. Name
  • Course
  • Date
• Title is centered, with no other formatting or styling
• Each paragraph is indented half an inch (hit the tab key once)

Citations: In-Text

Whether you quote, paraphrase, or summarize, when you use info not original to you (i.e. not your own opinions or conclusions), you need to cite where it came from.

A parenthetical citation in MLA should come before the period for a sentence, typically. It's a reflection of the first piece of info in the full Works Cited citation. Usually this is an author's last name, but if a source doesn't have an author, the first part of the citation will be some of the article title instead. If there is a relevant page number or time stamp (for a video or audio recording), include that, too!

• Words words words (Smith).
• Words words (Smith 32).
• Words words (Smith 3:43).
• Smith says words (32).*
• Smith says words (Jones 32).*

*If you promote the author to be named in the sentence, A) make sure they're important enough to namedrop and not just some random writer, and B) make sure the person saying the thing is actually the author of the source you got it from... if not, you'll still need a separate parenthetical citation.

Citations: Works Cited

MLA has a kind of checklist for writing citations that all source types use.

The simplified version of that checklist for an Internet article:

1. Author.
2. "Title of Article/Page."
3. Title of Thing the Article Appears In,
4. Publisher of The Thing,
5. Date source was published or updated,
6. url (without http:// in front).

The simplified version of that checklist for a scholarly article:

1. Author.
2. "Title of Article."
3. Title of Journal the Article Appears In,
4. vol. #,
5. [issue] no. #,
6. Date of publication,
7. page range for original publication.
8. Name of Database or Website Hosting the Article,
9. url (sans http://) or DOI (doi.org/######).

The simplified version of that checklist for a book or e-book:

1. Author.
2. Title of Book.
3. Publisher,
4. Year published.
5. If e-book: Name of Database or Website Hosting the Book,
6. If e-book: url (sans http://) or DOI (doi.org/######).