Last updated 8-07	Isothermal Community College P.O. Box 804, Spindale NC 28160 (828) 286-4636  fax (828) 286-8208 For more information, contact Director of Library Services Charles P. Wiggins

    
Information About Documenting Resources

What's a "resource"? 
In terms of writing a research paper, it can be a book, article, Internet site or other source where you find information that you use in writing your paper.  Even a person can be a resource.  In the same sense that resources for getting water might include a lake, a stream or a well, any one of these information "places" could be a resource for information you are looking for.

What does "documenting resources" mean?
Documenting a resource means putting all the right information in your paper about the resource you used so that another person could go and find the same information in the same resource ("citing" the resource, in other words).  At the same time, the citation gives credit to the person who made the information available to you in the first place, such as the author of a book or article, or the person who created the website where you found some information you needed for your paper.

What's a "citation?"
When you write a research paper, at the end of the paper you include a list of the resources you used for information (called a "Works Cited" or a "References" page.)  Each item in the list, which is essentially a "packet" of information sufficient to trace back to a particular resource, is called a citation.  Citing a resource means including this kind of specific information about the source in your work.  Resources are cited using your instructor's choice of documentation styles.

What's a "documentation style"?
A documentation style is a standard, agreed-on method for creating citations.  It provides formats for citing resources within the body of the paper, formats for listing different types of information resources cited at the end of the paper, and even ways to set up headings and margins for the paper.  There are many documentation styles; those which are currently the most widely used are styles created by the American Psychological Association (APA), the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the Chicago, or Turabian style. 

What's "plagiarism?"  And why is it such a big deal?
Plagiarism is a term used to describe the stealing of ideas or information.  Plagiarism is a big deal because it's unethical to steal information or ideas from another person, like it's wrong to steal the plans for someone else's invention and call them your own.  For more information on plagiarism and how to avoid it, see the Avoiding Plagiarism webpage.

What kinds of things do I have to document?
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center suggests that you should document:

• Paraphrases and summaries (sections of text in which you use your own words to explain information from another source)

• Direct quotations (sections of text in which you use exactly the same words in the same order as they appear in another source, identified as such
      by the use of quotation marks ["] on either end of the phrase)

  Information and ideas that are not common knowledge or are not available in a standard reference work

  Any borrowed material that might appear to be your own if there were no citation

Documentation Styles for Citing Resources Below are links to information on how write citations  in the MLA, APA and Chicago/Turabian documentation styles for various types of information resources, and pages of sample citations in the different styles.

For additional information on documenting resources, see Documentation Styles (University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center).

Disclaimer: These links are provided for your convenience. The resources to which they link are maintained by other entities and do not represent Isothermal Community College.