Sources found on online databases show in bib. as Print w/ no access date

aunttekoah

PLEASE HELP. I’m trying to finish my senior thesis, due TODAY, and most of the articles I have found and saved from online journals (EBSCOhost) and online magazines (Historical New York Times) are showing up as Print not Web on the MLA bibliography. It also is leaving off the date accessed. The URL, date accessed and Library Catalog are listed in the article's info tab. How can I fix this?

I tried to figure this out, but I found that a few sources whose Item Type is Journal Article or Magazine Article do show correctly on bibliography as Web followed by the date access. Then there are the rest of the sources, with the same details entered on the Info tab show as Print on the bibliography, despite being found & saved from an online database. HELP!

adamsmith

Go to the Zotero preferences, to the style tab and check the box "include URLs"
The MLA style only works correctly with that box checked.

aunttekoah

Thx for your help & quick response!!!

Does it then show the entire URL or just the root - cnn.com? If it is the full URL, do you then have to manually go into each source's bib & edit the URLs? If so, that is silly, time consuming & a flaw in Zotero. According to the 2009 MLA standards, you are only to add the the full URL when your Prof. specifies to do so or if the source is hard to find.

adamsmith

it shows the entire URL - and unless you can think of a useful algorithm to reduce URLs - and to be able to tell which ones to reduce - that's not a flaw of Zotero but a limitation of automatic creation of citations and, if anything, a flaw of the new MLA style.

ajlyon

Well, this is more a flaw in the silly 2009 MLA style guide. URLs are great -- they can eliminate the confusion of searching for a source in a hard-to-navigate site. Domain names are trivially derived from the name of the publication, so there is absolutely no reason to require non-informative pieces of the URL.

Having said all that, I don't believe that Zotero can automatically truncate the URLs.

[edit: Again, adamsmith beats me to it.]

aunttekoah

I just changed that setting. It did not fix the Print over Web issue & did not add the access date after all the sources that do end in Web.

Any more suggestions?

aunttekoah

I just realized that the sources marked as Web also dont have the basic domain name or the database it came from. Such as EBSCOhost, Medline or JSTOR.

adamsmith

click the "Refresh" button in the word plugin.

oh sorry - according to MLA guidelines URLs are not given at all - and that's reflected in the style:

MLA no longer requires the use of URLs in MLA citations. Because Web addresses are not static (i.e. they change often) and because documents sometimes appear in multiple places on the Web (e.g. on multiple databases), MLA explains that most readers can find electronic sources via title or author searches in Internet Search Engines.

Zotero isn't able to cite the database, but I don't see that as a requirement in MLA anywhere - if it is, please provide documentation. (edit: you're right, it is required - the style uses what's in the archive field, because the Library Catalogue field can't be accessed by csl)

I don't know about the access date - I can't reproduce that - can you give an example?

aunttekoah

I had refreshed the bibliography but it does not show any change after checking add URL.

Here are 2 examples of how the web bibs are turning out:

Sneed, Carl, and Mark A. Runco. “The beliefs adults and children hold about television and video games.” Journal of Psychology 126.3 (1992): 273. Web.

Zimmerman, Frederick J., Dimitri A. Christakis, and Andrew N. Meltzoff. “Television and DVD/Video Viewing in Children Younger Than 2 Years.” Archives of Pediatrics Adolescent Medicine 161.5 (2007): 473-479. Web.

aunttekoah

Thx agian! I think I better understand what MLA is asking for. I had read the MLA info that you posted. No sleep for days in not helping anything. :-)

Still just stuck on Zotero not adding access dates.

As far as MLA guidelines this is what I read was a requirement for electronic sources (including online databases):

Title of the Website, project, or book in italics. (Remember that some Print publications have Web publications with slightly different names. They may, for example, include the additional information or otherwise modified information, like domain names [e.g. .com or .net].)

Here is the example given for citing a website:

Editor, author, or compiler name (if available). Name of Site. Version number. Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site (sponsor or publisher), date of resource creation (if available). Medium of publication. Date of access.

adamsmith

for the access date - I'd have to see what's in your data - Export a couple of those items as RIS (right-click, select), open with a text editor and paste them here - I can't replicate this.

I don't think the website citations for MLA are perfect with Zotero - I might take a look at some point, but definitely not today - you'll have to touch those up by hand.