Transcript: Parts of a Book to Cite
Hi everyone my name is Rebecca and I’m a Reference Librarian at Lehman College. And what I want to talk to you about is what you need to cite. What are the elements of a book to cite in whichever format that you are using, MLA, APA, ASA. What are the elements for a book citation? So I’d like to show you what they are. So for parts of a print book you’ll need (1) the title, (2) the author or authors (or editors), (3) the publication year/the year it was published, (4) the publisher, and (5) the city of publication. Those are usually the five elements that you need to cite a book.
So I have this book at home and let’s say you’re citing any book, the information you’ll need is usually on the front cover and in the first few pages of the book, to cite it. So on the front cover of this book it gives you the title, “How to Use the Library: A Reference and Assignment Guide for Students,” that’s the title. You’ll need the author’s names and you’ll see it has Frank Farro and Nolan Lushington - those are the two authors of this book. Now we need to get the publisher name and that’s usually going to be on the inside. So you’ll see the first page is blank. You go on to the next page, it’s just the title again and here we go, we’re on the title page. So it gives us the whole title, it gives us the authors again, and in the bottom, you’ll see it says Greenwood Press. Anything that ends with “Press” that’s usually the publisher of the book. So, the publisher name is Greenwood Press and the city it’s located in is Westport, Connecticut. It also says London, but what you’ll do is that whenever you get a series, of it gives you a list of cities, choose the first city, so it’s going to be Westport. So, Greenwood Press is the publisher, Westport is the city that you’ll need. Now to get the year it was published you’ll go to the next page. This is really tiny print. This is the Copyright page and it’s really tiny, I don’t know if you can see it. It says Copyright © 1998 - so that was when this was published, in 1998. And that’s it. That’s what you need to cite a book. Title, Author(s), the Publisher, the City it was Published in, and the Year it was Published. If you see a bunch of years on the copyright, choose the most recent year that you see next to copyright. So, I hope that helps, thank you for listening and I’ll see you soon. Bye.