Before sweating over MLA or APA styles for citing sources, answer the following questions about each source.

What type of source?

• Is it a book, section or article from an edited book or anthology, periodical article (magazine, journal, or newspaper), or web page from a larger website?

Once the type of source is determined, consider the 4 W’s about the source.

What?

• What is the title?  What uniquely identifies the item?   
  
  • The title and page numbers of article in periodical or section of book? 
  • The title, edition (if not 1st ed.), volume (if multi-volumes) of book? 
  • The title, volume, issue number, and page numbers of periodical (magazine, newspaper, or journal)? 
  • The title of web page? 
  • The title of website? 
  • A case number (legal documents)?
  • Accession number (database item)?

(Note:  call number, International Standard Book Number – ISBN, or International Standard Serial Number – ISSN – are useful for retrieving an item in a library or purchasing an item at Amazon or Barnes & Noble, but not necessary for citing an item).

Who?

• Who created, updated, authored, or edited an item?  Individual(s) or organization(s)?  Is there an author, editor or both?

• Who published or produced the item?  Who sponsored the project that published or produced the item?

• For subscription databases, who is the vendor (i.e., EBSCO) and who provides access to the databases (i.e., Palm Bch. Comm. Coll. Lib., Lake Worth, FL)?

Where?

• Where was a book published?  Is the publisher or producer clearly identified?  For example, New York, Chicago or San Diego.

• For retrieval purposes, where is an online periodical article located?  For example, name of database (i.e., Academic Search Premier)?  Web address or URL – uniform resource locator?  For example, <http://search.ebscohost.com>.

• For retrieval purposes, where is web page or website located?  Web address or URL – uniform resource locator?  For example, <http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060501/boomtowns-small.html>.

When?

• When was the item created, authored, published, produced, or updated?  For example, 2000 or Jan. 2000.

• When was an online item – from database or web page – accessed or retrieved?  For example, 3 February 2004.