Film Studies: Citing and Organizing

Use this page to:

• Finds resources that help you properly cite and organize the sources you find. You can find information here on Refworks as well as some quick citation generators.
• Find out where to look online for information about various citation formats. Use the various subpages on
• MLA or
• Chicago format,
• or use this link to Shain Library's separate guide on citations.
• By offering some tips about plagiarism—what constitutes it, why it's an issue, and how to avoid it.

RefWorks should be your go-to resource for saving, citing and organizing your sources. You'll have to set up an account first, but once you do, you'll be able to perform all kinds of functions, including:

• Importing references from online catalogs and databases, as well as entering them manually
• Creating lists (and sublists) of references from which you can create bibliographies that are formatted to a given citation style (APA, MLA, etc.)
• Keeping notes about various sources and citations, and sharing these notes with collaborators

Access RefWorks by using this link.

Plagiarism is the representation of the work of another as your own. And whether it's deliberate or inadvertent, it's still plagiarism. 

How can you avoid it? Briefly, always cite when you are referencing the work of another, always quote if you are using verbatim text, and never, ever, ever pass off others' work as yours.

Some examples include:

• Directly quoting or paraphrasing a source — any source, even those you find online — without citing it.
• Presenting text from another source verbatim, without putting quotes around it or acknowledging that someone else wrote it.
• Downloading a paper from the Internet and passing it off as your own.

There are further kinds of academic dishonesty, including falsifying or fabricating data or sources; submitting a paper that you have written for more than one class (unbeknownst to the professors); and collaborating with others and then each submitting the end results as solo work.

For more on this topic, Acadia University's library has created this excellent (and kind of fun) tutorial on how to recognize and avoid plagiarism and other kinds of academic dishonesty.