Fisher College English Assignments

The Internet can be a powerful tool for research today. Use of the Internet and the personal computer are vital components of your higher education and will benefit you in the months and years to come. If you are used to being online, you may already be familiar with many possible search strategies and search engines. I have provided some links above to quicken your search, but one of the main aspects of these assignments is to gain familiarity with the Internet. Have fun!

Documenting Internet Sources

You have already discovered that the Internet's cup runneth over with information on just about any subject you can think of or would like to research. This accessibility to data can be invaluable to you as a student, citizen, and curious human being. However, documenting these sources can be confusing, and the extremely limited guidelines provided by the Modern Language Association (MLA) in their handbook, as interpreted by your textbooks (The Little, Brown Handbook, 6th ed. and The Bedford Reader, 6th ed. for EN 101, Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, 6th ed. for EN 201, and the surprising absence of any guidelines in An Introduction to Literature, 11th. ed. for EN 102) leave students wondering just how to go about documenting Internet sources. This section will attempt to redress this situation in small measure, and refer you to more extensive information for greater detail.

The Basic Format:

Okay, so you've done your research and have gathered your works cited. Now you need to document the Internet sources. You should attempt to provide the following information on your Works Cited page:

the author's name (if known)
the full title of the document in quotation marks
the title of the complete work if applicable in italics
the date of publication or last revision (if available; usually found at the bottom of the document)
the full http address (URL) enclosed within angle brackets (< >)
the date of visit in parentheses

Hence, a citation should look like this:

Burka, Lauren P.  "A Hypertext History of Multi-User Dimensions."  
     MUD History. 1993.  <http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/1pb/mud-history.html> 
     (5 Dec. 1994).

Here, the author's name is listed as in standard, print-based references, as is the title of the article and the larger work. The first date, 1993, is listed separately and refers to the date of electronic publication (or revision, as in "This site last revised on xx\xx\xx"). Following the publication date is the online address, enclosed within angle brackets. The final item is the date of user access (the date you visited the site), listed in parentheses.

The Details:

(Yes, you should read this, too!)

Evaluating Internet Sources

Your first consideration, of course, is to evaluate the quality of information which you access on the 'Net. Because anybody can publish just about anything on the Internet, you need to critically read and evaluate any site which addresses the topic you are researching. Consider the following as you visit various sites: Who is providing the information? What is(are) their "angle"? bias? credentials? Do they reference reliable sources? How logical, consistent, thorough, and well-supported is their argument/information? How does it compare with other sources, both online and in print media? These are questions you should ask of any source, online or not, but especially online. (For more details: go to Evaluating Sources)

Tips & Tricks for Research

Once you have determined that the site is valuable to your research, you should utilize it effectively. There are many ways to do this: print out the text (if you are working on the Fisher College network, see below); save the text to your diskette or hard drive; mark the site with a BOOKMARK so that you can quickly return to the site in the future; and/or copy and paste quotations directly into your word processing document (ALT+TAB between Netscape and Word (or whatever word processor you're using); CONTROL+C to copy; CONTROL+V to insert). To avoid plagiarism, be certain to give credit to your source.

You can easily build your Works Cited page by cutting and pasting the site's URL (Uniform Resource Locator), either directly from the LOCATION window or from your BOOKMARKS (to open the bookmark file: FILE, OPEN FILE IN BROWSER, C:/Netscape/bookmark.htm). This is quite advantageous as it prevents errors in copying URLs, which must be entered EXACTLY or your browser will not locate the site. (If you save your essay document as an HTM (HypterText Markup) file, you can even provide your reader with clickable references!)

Documentation: The Details

Okay, so you've done your research and have gathered your works cited. Now you need to document the Internet sources. These examples assume that your sources are all from the World Wide Web as http (HyperText Transfer Protocol) sites. You should attempt to provide the following information on your Works Cited page:

the author's name (if known)
the full title of the document in quotation marks
the title of the complete work if applicable in italics
the date of publication or last revision (if available; usually found at the bottom of the document)
the full http address (URL) enclosed within angle brackets (< >)
the date of visit in parentheses

Hence, a citation should look like this:

Burka, Lauren P.  "A Hypertext History of Multi-User Dimensions."  
     MUD History. 1993.  <http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/1pb/mud-history.html> 
     (5 Dec. 1994).

     Miller, Allison.  "Allison Miller's Home Page."  Lkd. EKU 
          Honors Program Home Page, at "Personal Pages."
          <http://www.csc.eku.edu/honors> (11 Nov.1995).

Notice here the item "Lkd. EKU Honors Program Home Page, at "Personal Pages." Lkd. is analogous to Qtd. in print media references and stands for "Linked in" (as Qtd. stands for "Quoted in"). Alternatively, spell out "Linked." An advantage here, thanks to the nature of hypertext links, is that the reader can visit the site where you found the referenced source (for whatever of value lies there) as well as access the original source with a simple mouse click on the linked document. The wonders of technology!

This approach differs from guidelines as they appear in the MLA Handbook;The Little, Brown Handbook; The Bedford Reader; and other sources, which in turn differ from one another in certain particulars. Why is this? Because the Internet (and especially the World Wide Web) are so new to most of us and are evolving so rapidly that conventions are evolving as well and are as yet unclear and nonstandard. I am here adopting Andrew Harnack and Gene Kleppinger's suggested forms, and they, in turn, have adapted Janice Walker and others (see their site for details; the two samples above are from their site). My primary concerns include the following: 1) elimination of spurious or unnecessary information (e.g., specifying America Online or any other ISP (Internet Service Provider), which is irrelevant to the location of the referenced document; specifying Available: as a prefix to a URL listing since that availability is implied by the electronic address itself; specifying Online. when, again, the electronic address makes that clear); 2) providing guidelines for those online sources which MLA does not address in their 4th Handbook (i.e., FTP, www homepages, listserv, telnet, etc.); 3) distinguishing between site publication or revision dates and user access dates (e.g., I accessed Harnack and Kleppinger's site on 3/30/97, but it was lasted updated on 11/25/96); 4) distinguishing between address of publication and address of retrieval (which, when known, should be indicated by Linked or Lkd., as with Qtd. references in print media); 5) and, in the cases of access via Telnet or similar sites, distinguishing between electronic addresses and command sequences (see Harnack and Kleppinger for details).

Throughout this exercise, I have been presuming that you are searching the World Wide Web (www), using http (HyperText Transfer Protocol) to access documents, as in: <http://members.aol.com/qwendi/fisher.htm> or <http://www.mysite.com/research/text.html> (Note: the second example does not exist). There are numerous other types of sites on the Internet besides those on the World Wide Web. These include FTP (File Transfer Protocol), Telnet, GOPHER, USENET (Newsgroups), Listserv, and E-Mail. The documentation principles are the same, though the details vary from type of site to type of site. For more information, go to Harnack and Kleppinger, "Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Electronic Sources on the Internet," which is the best online reference that I have found.

EN 101: Internet Research and Analysis

Assignment due Thursday, October 16. Rough drafts, including all documented Internet research, due Tuesday, October 14. (However, you may begin and complete it at any time up to the due date.)

This is a research assignment, using the Internet to research a subject, document your research, and write a brief summary/analysis of what you have found. Your essay should reflect the following: classification and/or division of your sources into appropriate categories and/or elements, summary of the main points of the sources, and your interpretation of the sources, including whatever conclusion you draw from your research.

The rules are simple:

Subject: Choice of three:
1. Is There Life on Mars?
2. The Future of Social Security
3. Preliminary Research for your Term Project (requires instructor's approval; this choice allows you to begin work earlier and develop your term project more thoroughly)
Sources: You must find at least three separate sources (hint: use on-line search engines)
Classify, analyze, and summarize the opinions you've found and provide your own interpretation. Your paper should be at least 500 words (2–3 pages) in length and include documentation of your sources (see LBH p. 585 and Documenting Internet Sources above for proper format). You may include printouts of your search results, but your paper is considered separate from the printouts.

Intermediate Writing: Internet Research, Summary & Synthesis

Assignment due the Monday following President's Day. (However, you may begin and complete it at any time up to the due date.)

This is a research assignment, using the Internet to research a subject, document your research, and write a brief summary/synthesis/interpretation of what you have found.

The rules are simple:

Subject: Choice of three:
1. Bilingual Education
2. Expeditions to Mars
3. Preliminary Research for your Term Project (requires instructor's approval)
Sources: You must find at least five separate sources; sources from our textbook or other sources not online are not admissible.
Summarize the opinions you've found and provide your own interpretation of your chosen topic. Your paper should be at least 2-3 pages in length and include documentation of your sources (see Documenting Internet Sources above for proper format). You may include printouts of your search results, but your paper is considered separate from the printouts.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, from the Latin word plagium* (kidnapping), is the act of submitting another person's ideas or work as your own. It can be either deliberate (you intentionally steal another's ideas or work and submit as your own) or accidental (you forget to credit a source or don't realize you need to do so), and it can also be defined, as Stephen Lucas defines it in The Art of Public Speaking, as global, patchwork, or incremental: global plagiarism is the stealing of an entire essay or other work and passing it off as your own; patchwork plagiarism is stealing from two or three sources; and incremental plagiarism is stealing from numerous sources. Internet plagiarism may seem both easy and untraceable; while it may be easy to commit, it is more difficult to hide than you might think, and it is never justified (it may even be grounds for a failing grade or even dismissal from college).

* Curiously, the root of plagium is plaga, or "net," which seems ironically appropriate to our subject (Interplaga, anyone?)!

Return to Documenting Internet Sources.

This document last revised on 21 May 1997 by Ernest Black.