Using NoodleTools to manage your research will take a lot of the mystery out of proper citation, which will help you avoid unintentional plagiarism. NoodleTools research management options will help keep you on your topic and allow you to organize your research in several different helpful ways. If you are using one of the school s databases, the library s Publications webpage has a guide with specific instructions for each of the school s databases. This guide will help you use NoodleTools to cite sources not found in the school s database. The first step in citing any source is to determine what type of source you have. You will need to take a close look to determine what type of source you have. Not all books are books. A book could be an anthology or a reference source. An anthology is a collection of shorter works that have already been published at other times in other publications. Examples of this are collections of poetry and collections of essays. A reference book can be an encyclopedia, dictionary, or almanac. Many of your sources will be found online. The internet is not a source. The internet is a place where digitized information is available. Some of this information was originally published in print. Some of it is born digital, having never been published in a printed format. There is a huge variety of sources of digital information available online. Some of the most popular online sources that you will use in your research are: 1. Newspapers 2. Magazines 3. Weblogs or Blogs 4. Webpages 5. Message boards 6. Chat rooms 7. Video clips 8. Audio clips 9. Government reports 10. Pamphlets 11. ebooks 12. Encyclopedias 13. Photographs 14. Paintings 15. Tweets When citing these sources, it is important to cite them as what they are. A New York Times article may be found on the New York Times webpage, but the article is cited as a newspaper article. An entry from World Book Online, is cited as an encyclopedia article. Revised 9/2013 Page 1
The first step to entering a source in NoodleTools, is to find your source in NoodleTools <Select a citation type> dropdown menu. Here is an expanded view of the dropdown menu. This menu is for MLA style. If you are citing in APA or Chicago, the menu will be similar, but different. Each style has different ways of citing sources For this example, we will cite a newspaper article from the New York Times website. Since it is a newspaper article, we will choose Newspaper. Almost every source you may encounter is listed here. Presidents tweet, so you may need to cite information from a Twitter feed. YouTube video Podcast A teacher or professor s lecture A TV show Find the entry that best matches your source. Select it and click the create citation button. Revised 9/2013 Page 2
With this screen, NoodleTools helps you confirm that you are citing your source correctly This is a slide show that will clarify what a newspaper is, how to evaluate it for authority and accuracy and how to cite it. SourceCheck shows you some common sources that are often mistaken for a newspaper article. Our article came from the New York Times and it is not extra information, so we will click on continue. You can check this box to skip this screen next time. Revised 9/2013 Page 3
This screen shows that you are: citing an article from a newspaper found on a website. Fill in all the fields that you can. If you don t have information for a field, leave it blank. NoodleTools will know how to format your Works Cited or bibliography page without this information. The only fields that are required are the ones with a red stripe in them. For help with any field, mouse over the field and a box will pop up with more information. If your teacher requires an annotation, type it in here. Be sure to follow your teacher s instructions as to the content of the annotation. There is no standard rule for what an annotation should contain. Click Submit. Revised 9/2013 Page 4
Your citation will look like this: Use this link to make changes to your citation. If you entered a URL, this link will take you directly back to the article. If you are citing in MLA or APA, use this link when it comes time to create your in-text parenthetical citation. If you are using Chicago style, the footnote will be right below the citation. Copy and paste it into your paper Type the page number you are citing. If you don t have a page number, leave it blank This is what you copy and paste into your document or slide presentation. Revised 9/2013 Page 5
When you are ready to print your Works Cited page or Bibliography, select Print/Export to Word. If you don t have Word, select Print/Export to RTF. Depending on how your computer is configured, NoodleTools will either download the document to your desktop or download and open it. NoodleTools will format your document applying all of the rules of the citation style you are using. Your bibliography will open in your word processor and will be perfectly formatted. Keep this document separate from the paper you are writing. When you are finished print it out and attach it to your paper. Revised 9/2013 Page 6