CAT 2: How to Read a Citation

You will see citations on many of the sources you use for academic projects.  If you find a great article and want to see the sources it builds off of, you will need to be able to read the citations in order to find these sources.  By being able to read the citations you will know where you have to look to find the exact piece of information you need. 

Here is the information you typically need in order to cite the following types of sources. We also have some tips to help you decipher citations so that you can figure out the type of information source being cited. This can help you locate useful sources that you might find in bibliographies or lists of references in your reading.

Book

Levitt Steven D. and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything. New York: William Morrow, 2005.

Clues that this is a book:

• Contains only one title: Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
• Includes a place of publication: New York
• Includes the name of a publishing company: William Morrow
• Might or might not include page numbers.

To find a specific book, you can search the Library Catalog by author or title.

Journal Article (print)

Clues that this is a print article:

• Contains the title of the article, sometimes in quotation marks: "Empirical assessment of expertise"
• Contains another title, the title of the journal, newspaper, or magazine in which the article appears, often underlined or in italics: Human Factors
• Contains a volume and, sometimes, an issue number: 45. 1, or sometimes 45(1)
• The date is sometimes a year, sometimes month and year, sometimes season (example: Spring) and year.

If you have a citation to a specific article that you are interested in finding, you can search the Library Catalog or the Electronic Journals List for the title of the journal.

Conference Paper

Computational intelligence techniques for a smart electric grid of the future
Zhenhua Jiang.  Advances in Neural Networks. Proceedings 6th International Symposium on Neural Networks, ISNN 2009, p 1191-1201, 2009

Clues that this is a conference paper:

• Title includes words "Proceedings" or "Symposium" or "Conference" or "Congress" or "Workshop"
• Date is a year

To find a specific conference proceeding (the proceeding is the collection of all the papers presented at the conference) search the Library Catalog for the name of the conference.

Newspaper article

Bick, Julie. "The Long (and Sometimes Expensive) Road to the SAT." New York Times 28 May 2006, Section 3 p6.

Clues that this is a newspaper article:

• Like journal articles, it contains the title of the article (often in quotation marks) and the title of the publication
• Unlike journal articles, the date includes the month and day in addition to the year
• Some include section numbers: Section 3
• Some include section numbers as part of the page numbers (e.g. A6, B4)

If you have a citation to a specific newspaper article that you are interested in finding, you can search the Library Catalog or the Electronic Journals List for the title of the journal.

Article (online)

Clues that this is an online article:

• Includes the elements of an article citation, such as two titles, volume/issue numbers, and page numbers
• Includes the name of the article database in which the article was found: MLA Bibligraphy
• Contains a URL to the article database in which the article was found: http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/
• Includes a date of access

Like print articles, you can search the Library Catalog or the Electronic Journals List for the title of the journal, newspaper, or magazine to see if we have access to the publication here at the library.

Web Page

(all of the elements might not be available for each web page)

NationMaster,   http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php.  2009.  Accessed November 19, 2009.

Clues that this is a web page:

• Often does not have individual authors
• Includes a URL to the site.
• Does not include the name of a library or library database
• Includes a date of access.