Overview of Citations
Anatomy of a Citation
Most citations are of the following two types:
- An article in a journal
- A book
While citation styles may differ a little, you should be able to tell which it is by looking for a few specific things. Almost all citations include author, year of publication, the title of the book or article, and (if it is a journal article) the name of the journal. Journal citations will also include information about the volume and issue.
Books
APA format
Format: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of book. Publisher
Example: Hendler, J. A., & Mulvehill, A. M. (2016). Social machines: The coming collision of artificial intelligence, social networking, and humanity. Linworth.
MLA format
Format: Author A Last name, Author A first name and Author B first name Author B last name. Title of Book. Publisher, Year.
Example: Hendler, James A., and Alice M. Mulvehill. Social Machines : The Coming Collision of Artificial Intelligence, Social Networking, and Humanity. Apress, 2016.
Note that they contain essentially the same information, but just format it in different places. For books you will notice that the book title is in italics for both formats. If you see a citation with this format and want to see if the library has it, please use the FalconSearch.
Note: you will probably have the best results if you search by either Author or Title in the dropdown box next to the search text. If you do not find it, you can search in WorldCat to see if another library has it and we may be able to request this via interlibrary loan.
Journal Articles
Journal Articles look a little different. These will usually include the author, the year, the title of the article, the name of the journal and its volume and issue information.
APA format
Format: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article: Subtitle words. Title of Periodical, volume(issue), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyyy
Example: Wooldridge, M. B., & Shapka, J. (2012). Playing with technology: Mother–toddler interaction scores lower during play with electronic toys. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 33(5), 211–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2012.05.005
MLA format
Format: Author A Last name, Author A first name and Author B first name Author B last name. "Title of Article: Subtitle Words." Title of Periodical, vol. #, no. #, year, pp. URL
Example: Wooldridge, Michaela B., and Jennifer Shapka. “Playing with Technology: Mother–Toddler Interaction Scores Lower during Play with Electronic Toys.” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, vol. 33, no. 5, 2012, pp. 211–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2012.05.005.
Though you can see some clear variations between these two formats, the basic information is consistent. In this particular case, the journal title will be in italics. For the purpose of finding a specific article, you will want to pay attention to the journal title.
This is what you will use to search using our journal locator. Please note that often a journal will have a subtitle; in most cases you will want to search for only the first part of the title, as the subtitle may not be indexed (e.g. in the above example search for “Humor” and leave off the part after the colon “:”).