MLA Reference Method

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Fundamentals of Information Technology

MLA Reference Methods

Books

Books (including edited books), up to four authors:

Author surname and forename (if there is more than one author, only reverse the name of the first author). Title (underlined). Edition- if 2nd or later. Place of publication: Publisher: date:

Gardner, Howard.The arts and human development. New York: Wiley: 1973.
Jackobson, Roman, and Linda R, Waugh. The sound shape of language. Bloomington: Indiana UP: 1979.

Maher, Barry A.,ed. Progress in experiential personality research 6 vols. New York: Academic Press, 1964-1972.

Books , four or more authors:

List the details of the first author, followed by et al. (meaning 'and others'):

Dickson, Marjorie et al. Writing well London: Sage: 1981.

Part of a book A reference to a chapter in a book should contain the following elements:

Author(s) (of the chapter) surname and forename. Title of chapter (in inverted commas). Title of book (underlined). Ed. Forenames and surnames of editor(s). Place of publication: Publisher, date. Page numbers:

Vygostsky, Lev Semenovich. "Genesis of the Higher Mental Functions". Learning to Think. Ed. Paul Light, Sue Sheldon, and Martin Woodhead. London: Routledge, 1991. 32-41.

Journal article

A reference to a journal should include the following elements:

Author surname and forename. Title of article (in inverted commas). Title of journal (underlined), volume number.issue number (if available) date (in brackets): page numbers:

Popper, Stephen E., and Kevin McCloskey. "Individual Differences and Subgroups within Populations: the Shopping Bag Appraoch."Aviation Space and Environmental Medicine 64.1 (1993): 74-77.

Electronic media

It is increasingly common for information to be published in electronic form: for example, electronic journals and books, email bulletins, World Wide Websites etc. These should be referenced as carefully as any other source.

Reference to a CD-ROM:

Oxford English Dictionary: On compact disc. 2nd ed.[CD-ROM]. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Reference to a website:

You will probably wish to reference a specific part of a website:

Daniel, Robert.T. "The history of Western music". In: Britannica online: Macropaedia. Online. Available from: http://www.eb.co.uk 14 June 1997.

Occasionally you may need to reference to a whole website:

American Psychological Association PsychNET. Nodate. Online. Available: http://www.apa.org 4 January 1999.

Reference to an electronic journal:

Smith, Lawrence. "Keynesian economic policy in France". Journal of Economic Analysis 35.2 (1996): 19-27. Available: European Business ASAP, Information Access Company. http://www.searchbank.com/eurobus/ 11 October 1996.

Conference papers

Conference papers are similar to book chapters in that they appear as a part of a wider publication (ie published proceedings) and should be referenced in a similar way, as below:

Borgman, Christopher L., John Bower, and David Kreiger. "From hands-on science to hands-on information retrieval". Proceedings of the 52nd ASIS annual meeting: Vol. 26. Managing information and technology. Ed. James Katzer and George B. Newby. Medford, New Jersey: Learned Information, 1989. 96-100.

Reports

Sometimes it will be necessary for you to refer to reports in your work, these should be referenced almost the same as a book, with the report number appearing after the report title, as below:

Birney, Alan J. and Margaret M. Hall. Early identification of children with written language difficulties (Report No.81-502). Washington, D.C.:National Educational Association, 1981.

Government publications

Sometimes individuals or companies are commissioned to produce reports for the Government, and should be given as the author(s). In other cases, there will be no identified author and here it is best to give as author the Government Department which originated the work:

Department of the Environment. Annual Report 1995. The Government's expenditure plans 1995-6 to 1997-98. London: HMSO. 1995.

Strictly speaking, the Department's name should be preceded by Great Britain, since officially Great Britain is the author of all official UK publications, but it is common and certainly simpler for this to be omitted.

HMSO (Her Majesty's Stationery Office, later renamed The Stationery Office, or TSO) is the Government's official publisher; it should never be given as the author.

Source: University of Portsmouth, References and Citations. Nodate. Online. Available http://www.envf.port.ac.uk/fac/olc/infoskills/refcite/refcite.htm October 12, 2002.

Updated 1/3/2006 gjc

University at Albany - State University of New York