INFORMATION ETHICS   – INTRODUCTION

After completing this tutorial you will
1) Know what types of information need citation
2) Understand three basic citation styles: MLA, APA and CSE
3) Be aware of the places to go for detailed information on creating citations

This tutorial will take about five to ten minutes to complete. View the videos and follow the 4 Steps shown below.

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STEP 1: Info Literacy – When and How to Cite (2:50 minutes)

Copyright is the legal right granted to an author, composer, playwright, publisher, or distributor to exclusive publication, production, sale, or distribution of a literary, musical, dramatic, or artistic work. (American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed.)


So if you made it, only you can legally produce it and profit from it — whether it’s a book, poem, song, photograph, or other creative work. And as soon as you make your creative work, you automatically have copyright of it. You don’t have to do anything.


When someone has made a creative work that you want to use in your own work, you need to correctly cite it.

Link to presentation

This tutorial gives basic information on how to cite other people’s work.

 

 
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STEP 2: Citation Styles - 3:18 minutes

Different disciplines follow different rules when citing the work of others correctly. These sets of rules are called citation styles. Each uses the same information about the source, but the information is presented in a different order, depending on the citation style.

Your professor will tell you which citation style to use for your papers, either in the syllabus or in the assignment itself.

Link to presentation

This video shows Ronald White’s A. Lincoln: A Biography in different citation formats.

 

 
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STEP 3: Useful Links: Below are some websites related to information ethics that you may want to visit.

Copyright and Use:  
United States Copyright Office: copyright.gov/
Creative Commons: creativecommons.org/  
Public domain: copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Avoiding Plagiarism:
spu.edu/depts/library/general_reference/r_plagiarism_students.htm

Citation Style Help: Learning APA Style: apastyle.org/learn/

MLA Style & Formatting (from Purdue University): owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/15/

Chicago Manual of Style Online: chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

Ask A Librarian at SPU: spu.edu/depts/library/ask.htm

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STEP 4: PROVIDING FEEDBACK
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