MLA Guide: Electronic, Online Resources

A thorough guide to the citation of electronic resources has been developed at the University of South Florida by Janice Walker. Walker's guide includes methods of citing resources from the World Wide Web, email discussion groups, newsgroups, and ftp files. It has been approved by the Alliance for Computers and Writing. What follows here is an adaption of Walker's guide which shows both parenthetical insertions and bibliographical ("works cited") styles for electronic resources.

Above all, students must remember that online resources must be held to the same high standards of scholarly integrity that we impose on material in the library. The difference is that your college library staff is not in charge of cyberspace; in fact, no one is. One problem of searching for materials on the World Wide Web, for instance, is that a search engine can return a listing from the Yale University English Department alongside a listing from my Aunt Millie. Our introduction to the Academic Weblists includes several articles about ensuring the scholarly legitimacy of resources on the World Wide Web and elsewhere in cyberspace. Students need to think twice about using material that is not retrievable (e-mail, especially) by others in the community of scholars.

The section on World Wide Web resources is based on advice given at the Modern Language Association's own web-site at http://www.mla.org/style/sources.htm

The copyright for these examples of bibliographic forms for electronic resources (other than WWW and CD-ROM examples) belongs to Janice Walker. For further information regarding these forms and their fair use, contact Janice Walker at the University of South Florida.

We also recommend "Documenting Internet Sources in MLA Style," by Andrew Harnack of Eastern Kentucky University. Harnack's document is particularly helpful in that it suggests ways of incorporating quoted material - using verbal clues and "source-reflective statements" -  within one's text.

World Wide Web Sites

1. Name of the author, editor, compiler, or translator, reversed for alphabetizing and followed by an abbreviation such as ed., trans., if appropriate
2. Title of the article, poem, short story with the scholarly project, database, periodical; in quotation marks, followed by the description Online posting
3. Title of a book (underlined)
4. Name of the editor, compliler, translator, if not cited earlier
5. Publication information for any print version of this resource (if such a thing exists)
6. Title of the scholarly project, database, periodical or professional or personal site (underlined); or, for a site with no title, a description such as Home page
7. Name of the editor of the scholarly project or database (if available)
8. Version number of the source (If not part of the title) or other identifying number
9. Date of electronic publication, of the latest update, or of posting
10. Page numbers or the number of paragraphs or of other numbered sections of the material (if any)
11. Name of any institution or organization sponsoring or associated with the web site
12. Date when the researcher found access to this resource
13. Electronic address, or URL, of the resource (in <angle brackets>). It is no longer considered necessary to include the protocol (http://) for a WWW download, since most browsers will work without including that protocol. If possible, however, show the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the web-site in its entirely without break or inappropriate hyphens at line-endings and without spaces. (Provide the URL its own line if necessary.)
    Note, also, that spelling and, sometimes, even decisions about which case to use can be critically important in reporting URLs.

Works Cited

Scholarly Project
The Avalon Project: Articles of Confederation, 1781. Co-Directors William C. Fray and Lisa A. Spar. 1996. Yale Law School. 2 Dec. 1997

     <www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/artconf.htm>.

Professional Site  
Guide to Grammar and Writing. Capital Community-Technical College. 2 Dec. 1997
<webster.commnet.edu/HP/pages/darling /grammar.htm>.

Personal Site
Jascot, John. Home page. 1 Dec. 1997    <webster.commnet.edu/HP/pages/staff /jascot/jascot.htm>

Books published online
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, 1903. Project Bartleby.  Ed. Steven van Leeuwen. Dec. 1995. Columbia U. 2 Dec.1997    <www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/dubois/>.

Poem
Dunbar, William. "The tretis of the twa mariit women and the wedo." The Poems of William Dunbar Ed. James Kinsley. Clarendon Press, New York. 1979. University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center. Ed. David Seaman. Jan. 1994. U. of Virginia. 2 December 1997    <etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/browse-mixed-new?id= DunMari&tag=public&images=images/modeng&data=
/lv1/Archive/mideng-parsed>.

Article in an online journal
Fitter, Chris. "The Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre."

     Early Modern Literary Studies 3.1 (Sept. 1997): 60 pars. 2 Dec. 1997  <www.humanities.ualberta.ca/emls
/03-2/fittnoct.html>.

In-Text Citation

In parenthetical citations, you will treat online resources the same as you would treat other kinds of resources, according to their type (book, journal article, etc.). The key, remember, is to provide the means necessary for your reader to discover and share in what you have found, whether those resources can be found on a library shelf or in cyberspace.

As Fitter points out, "Landscape description in this period is in transition, from traditional paysage moralisé to pictorialism, and verse such as Saint-Amant's La Solitude, for instance, anticipates Romantic "mood-music" in the age of the emblem book" (59).

EBSCO or Online Sources of Full-Text Articles

Anderson, J. "Keats in Harlem." New Republic 204.14 (8 Apr. 1991): n. pag. Online EBSCO. 29 December 1996

In-Text Citation

Telnet Sites

List the author's name (if known), the title of the work (if shown) in quotation marks, the title of the full work if applicable in italics, and the complete telnet address, along with directions to access the publication, along with the date of visit.

Works Cited

Gomes, Lee. "Xerox's On-Line Neighborhood: A Great Place to Visit." Mercury News 3 May 1992. 
       telnet lambda.parc.xerox.com 8888,@go #50827,
       press 13 (5 Dec. 1994).

In-Text Citations

Xerox developed the first web-site to take full advantage of the new technologies available to web authors (Gomes).

Gopher Sites

For information found using gopher search protocols, list the author's name, the title of the paper in quotation marks, any print publication information, and the gopher search path followed to access the information, including the date that the file was accessed.

Works Cited

Quittner, Joshua. "Far Out: Welcome to Their World Built of MUD." Published in Newsday, 7 Nov. 1993. 
gopher /University of Köln/About MUDs MOOs 
and MUSEs in Education/Selected Papers/newsday 
(5 Dec. 1994).

In-Text Citation

In the early 90s, some teachers found, quite early on, that students enjoyed learning while using multi-user environments (Quittner).

Email, Listserv, Newslists

Give the author's name (if known), the subject line from the posting in quotation marks, and the address of the listserv or newslist, along with the date. For personal e-mail listings, the address may be omitted.

Works Cited

Bruckman, Amy S. "MOOSE Crossing Proposal." 
        mediamoo@media.mit.edu
        (20 Dec. 1994).

In-text Citation

Some instructors have been using a MOO to substitute, virtually, for the classroom experience (Bruckman).

Works Cited

Thomson, Barry. "Virtual Reality." Personal e-mail
        (25 Jan. 1995).

In-text Citation

Some instructors have been using a MOO to substitute, virtually, for the classroom experience (Thomson).