Citing Sources

There are two main goals of citations: to give credit to the originators of the ideas in your work and to allow the reader to find/access the same information. Therefore, it is important to give as much detail about the source of information as possible. Although the order varies by style guide, if available every citation needs to include: name of the creator (author), title of the work, where the work can be found (i.e. title of book collection, journal or website), edition information (if not the first edition), and publication data (who published, when and where). 

Check out the following title for support writing for social work. 

About APA Style

APA Style originated in 1929 and covers the aspects of scholarly writing mostly pertaining to:

• Social Sciences (i.e. Psychology, Sociology, and Education), 
• Nursing,
• Business,
• and related fields 

Check out the following resources for more information about APA Style. 

APA Style Examples

• A book (If an e-book, provide the DOI or Permalink) 
  • In-text Citation
    • (Sapolsky, 2017)
  • Bibliography or Reference 
    • Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Books.
• An article in an electronic journal 
  • In-text Citation
    • (Grady et al., 2019)
  • Bibliography or Reference
    • Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000185
• A webpage on a website with a government agency group author
  • In-text Citation
    •  (National Institute of Mental Health, 2018)
  • Bibliography or Reference
    • National Institute of Mental Health. (2018, July). Anxiety disorders. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/index.shtml

 These examples came from the Reference Examples page on the APA Style website.

Citation Generation 

Our catalog can generate citations for a Reference page.

1. Click the title of the source ( i.e. book or article) in the results list. It will open a new page about just that title.
2. In the "Send to" box, found below the title, look for the quotation mark labeled "Citation".
3. Clicking the quotation mark will open a box where you can choose the appropriate Style.

Most of our databases will also produce a citation. The link is usually on the page with the article itself.