How to Keep Records

You can’t (and you shouldn’t) rely on your memory for all this information. You shouldn’t just jot notes down on the backs of envelopes or in margins of your notebook. You need a system. So how do you keep track? If you are doing a documented essay with three sources, you can probably just keep the books, periodicals, or website printouts at your desk and refer to them when you need to.

But if you are doing a writing assignment that requires you to use more than five sources, you need a system. (It would be good to use a system even with only three sources just so you develop the habit of keeping track of the sources.) When you see your Overlook-like classmates scurrying around the library looking for “the big red book at the end of the aisle” or crying in front of their computers, you’ll be very thankful that you kept to your system.

Let’s review what information you need to record every time you use an outside source for your research. You need to find a way you can keep track of this information with the least pain and the least waste of time.

Recording information about a book

When you use a book, record this information:

  1. Author(s) (this includes editors and translators)
  2. Title and subtitle
  3. Edition (other than first)
  4. City of publication
  5. Publisher
  6. Date

You can use note cards to record this information. There is nothing wrong with this system, unless your penmanship is bad, or you tend to use abbreviations and then forget what they stand for. For more information about using note cards, see the lesson “Exploring a Research Topic and Identifying Relevant Sources.”

Some people prefer to keep records by printing from Internet sources. That means that some records will be on 8 ½ x 11-inch printer paper. Since it is good to have everything in the same format and the same size, it’s a good idea to stick with full-size 8 ½ x 11-inch sheets for everything, even a one-line note, if you choose this method for recording information about sources.

The combination of photocopying and printing from the Internet is an easy option when it is available. Take a look at the pages of a book below. These are copies of the title page and the back of the title page (the copyright page). Find these items on the pages: the author, the title, the city of publication, the date of publication, and the publisher. Use your notes to record each piece of information as you locate it.

Copyright and Title page from Melissa Muller’s book, Anne Frank: A Biography

Source: Anne Frank bibliographic information, Henry Holt and Co. LLC

 Click to see larger version of the bibliographic information.

Now that you are finished reading and finding the bibliographic information for this book, check your understanding to see how you did.

Check Your Understanding

Sample Response:

Author’s Name

Not too hard. But be sure you don’t think the author’s name is Anne Frank. You should note that the translator’s name is also given.

Title

The full title is Anne Frank: The Biography. Even though there is no colon on the title page, a colon is always used between the title and the subtitle. You can ignore the brackets around “The Biography.”

City of Publication

Usually this information is at the bottom of the title page, but in this book it appears on the page facing the title page. That’s not a problem because there’s another place to find it. It’s on the copyright page in the fourth line from the top.

Publisher

Copyright page, first line.

Date of publication

On the copyright page, seventh line from the top.

Close

All the information that you could possibly need for your annotated bibliography is right there on the title page and copyright page. All you have to do is make a photocopy of those two pages, and you are set. To be double safe, you could also photocopy the cover of the periodical. If the periodical is a newspaper, you will need to write down the information since it would be difficult to copy. For this task, use a full-size sheet of paper.

If there is no convenient way to photocopy, you will have to write out the information. Do this on a full-size sheet of paper.

How about taking notes on a laptop? You can keep good records on a laptop, and this is preferable to doing it in a bound notebook because you can rearrange the entries and weed out those that you end up not needing. The drawback of the laptop is that you might not always have it with you. It is very bad research practice to keep some records in one format and others in a second format. It may not seem like a problem, but it can easily become one. Good researchers use a single-format system.

It is best to get into the habit of recording source information in the same way. Pick one method: ALWAYS have your laptop with you OR use note cards OR use photocopies and full-size sheets of paper.

Recording information about a periodical

Review of the information you need for a periodical:

  1. Author(s) of the article
  2. Title and subtitle of the article
  3. Title of the periodical
  4. Date of publication
  5. Volume number
  6. Issue number
  7. Page numbers

See if you can locate all the information for Howard Tinberg’s article on the table of contents page below. Use your notes to record each piece of information as you locate it.

Stack of Books

Source: Table of Contents page, College Composition
and Communication

Now that you are finished reading and finding the bibliographic information for this book, check your understanding to see how you did.

Check Your Understanding

Sample Response:

We already know the author’s name (Howard Tinberg). Are there any other authors, editors, or translators? There are none. The editors of the periodical do not count as editors of this article.

Title: “‘Read As If for Life’: What Happens When Students Encounter the Literature of the Shoah.” Since this is a short work, the title is enclosed in quotation marks. But there are also quotation marks in the title. What do we do? The outside quotation marks are double (regular) quotation marks; the inner quotation marks are singles.

Title of the periodical: This is a trick question. The title of the periodical is not written out in full on the table of contents page. But the full title is College Composition and Communication. Where would you find that? You could find it on the cover of the periodical. You can also find the date, volume, and issue number on the cover. So the best thing in this case would have been to photocopy both the table of contents and the front cover.

Date: February, 2009

Volume: 60

Issue: 3

Pages: Not so easy. This isn’t a one-page article, so how do you tell where it ends? You are pretty safe in assuming that this article includes all pages up to the first page of the next article. (In this case, that is true.) The page numbers should be 591–592. But you should consider the possibility that the next article could start half way down page 594. You would have to think of this while you still had the periodical available. If it turned out to be the case, you could make a note on the photocopy.

Close

Recording information about a website

For information from a website, it is best to make a copy of the web page. Be sure the page includes the date the web page was created or modified. Also note the date you accessed it.

MLA no longer requires the use of URLs in MLA citations. Because web addresses change often and because documents sometimes appear in multiple places on the web (i.e., in multiple databases), MLA explains that most readers can find electronic sources via title or author searches using Internet search engines.

For instructors or editors who still wish to require the use of URLs, MLA suggests that the URL appear in angle brackets after the date of access like the example below.

     Aristotle. “Poetics.” Trans. S. H. Butcher. The Internet Classics Archive. Web Atomic and Massachusetts
..................Institute of Technology, 13 Sept. 2007. Web. 4 Nov. 2008. ‹http://classics.mit.edu/›.

Recording information about an article on a database

For database articles, print the article. Be sure to include the date you accessed the database and—if you used a library—the name of the library (in a handwritten note on the printout).

Make It Stick
Using your notes, write what you need to photocopy or print out for each type of source.

  1. What photocopying is needed for a book? (Hint: you need to copy two pages)
  2. What photocopying is needed for a periodical? (Hint: You need to copy one page for sure but possibly two.)
  3. What printing is needed for a website? (Hint: You need one print job and two things must be included.)
  4. What printing is needed for a database article? (Hint: You need one print job and two things must be included.)
Check Your Understanding

Sample Response:

  1. Book: title page and copyright page

  2. Periodical: Table of contents and (optionally) the cover

  3. Website: copy of the Web page with URL creation or modification date, and accessed date

  4. Database article: the article with date of access and library of access

    5.  

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