MLA - not showing online database source in bibliography

If you get an article from an online database / subscription service (e.g. JSTOR), MLA style calls for you to include that database in the entries on the Works Cited page (see link and excerpt from Purdue OWL below).

This is not working for me. I grab the info from JSTOR or EBSCO but it does not include the database when inserting the bibliography in Word.

Questions:
1. Does this work for others?
2. What should I check to try and get this working?

Thanks.

-John

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(from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/08 )
An Article from an Online Database (or Other Electronic Subscription Service)

Cite articles from online databases (e.g. LexisNexis, ProQuest, JSTOR, ScienceDirect) and other subscription services just as you would print sources. Since these articles usually come from periodicals, be sure to consult the appropriate sections of the Works Cited: Periodicals page, which you can access via its link at the bottom of this page. In addition to this information, provide the title of the database italicized, the medium of publication, and the date of access.

Note: Previous editions of the MLA Style Manual required information about the subscribing institution (name and location). This information is no longer required by MLA.

Junge, Wolfgang, and Nathan Nelson. “Nature's Rotary Electromotors.” Science 29 Apr. 2005: 642-44. Science Online. Web. 5 Mar. 2009.

Langhamer, Claire. “Love and Courtship in Mid-Twentieth-Century England.” Historical Journal 50.1 (2007): 173-96. ProQuest. Web. 27 May 2009.
  • yeah, sorry - that can't be done at the moment - Zotero puts that information in the "Library Catalogue" field and that can't be cited.
  • edited December 3, 2010
    @adamsmith: there isn't a CSL variable available that "Library Catalog" can be easily mapped to, but wouldn't "Archive"(Zotero)/"archive"(CSL) work here?
  • not sure - historians would have to chime in - I'd worry about a lot of styles like MHRA and CMOS that use the archive field quite a bit.
    Plus, of course, we would need to change all the translators.
  • So maybe we just need a "catalog" CSL variable?
  • that'd be my sense - but I'm not sure and we should think this true.
    The problem is that, of course, you wouldn't want the library catalogue printed for print books*
    I don't think that's a problem - in MLA I'd first test whether something is an online source - i.e. does it have a URL - and only then print the "catalogue" variable. But we'd want to make sure.
    We'd also want to see if this is a requirement only for MLA - in which case it might be debatable if it's worth making a change just for that - but my sense is that it's increasingly common for style to want the database an article was taken from cited.

    * though some people have actually expressed interest in being able to put that into citation styles they use for private literature lists, so that'd be another plus of the variable.
  • If you copy/past the date accessed into Zotera "Accessed" under Info and then copy/paste the database name into Zotera "Archive" under Info the Bibliographic citation will be correct - except that the database name will not transfer in italics.

    ex. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 25 Mar. 2011.

    Is there a way to automatically populate the information from Gale to those fields in Zotera?
  • it would certainly be possible, but we'd need to make a decision that this is in fact the field we want to use for databases in Zotero - and I'm not sure it is (I'm also not sure it isn't ...)
  • These conversations are getting unwieldy. Didn't I comment on this issue somewhere else (github?)?

    FWIW, I consider this MLA requirement archaic (MLA: it makes no difference where I get a copy of an article, and I certainly don't expect my students to include this information), and surely to go away at some point. So my suggestion on solutions would be based on that perspective.

    I'm not really sure that archive works for this, but it might.
  • While I heartily agree that we shouldn't need to fuss about where a document comes from, there are commercial legal databases out there (Westlaw and Lexis, the so-called Wexis twins) that carry slip opinions not available from other sources. For these, it is meaningful to record the database source and the document number, because that is the only path back to the material.
  • We separated "Archive" from "Catalogue" for a good reason (https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/853 https://www.zotero.org/trac/changeset/5701 ). Please don't change it back. It has to do with citing archival sources.
  • thanks for pointing that out Elena - that was exactly my concern with the archive field.
    This seems to me to indicate we should map catalogue to csl instead.
  • My point is just WRT to CSL, and it would be that "catalog" is just too concrete/specific for a more general notion of a source. Whatever the solution for this is, it should also apply to things like datasets, for example.

    And if that solution is something other than CSL "archive", then we should explain why.
  • edited July 13, 2012
    An article from an online database or magazine is quite easy to format using MLA 7th edition readers handbook. Here is the format.

    Magazine in Online Database

    Author of article. "Title of article." Title of the magazine. Date. Database title. Name of Database provider. Date Accessed. <URL>.

    Health Canada. "Sugar Substitutes." Health Canada. February 18, 2012. Artificial Sweeteners. Jan 25, 2012.
    <http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/addit/sweeten-edulcor/index-eng.php>.
    Source: http://www.workscitedformat.com

    Also, here are 2 important points to note:

    MLA does not need underlining. Titles, like periodical and book titles, are currently italicized and not underlined like before.
    In citations, URLs are no longer in need.

    MLA currently recommends writers to use only web addresses if the audience source is unlikely to be unavailable due to the URLs changeable nature.
  • MLA does not need underlining. Titles, like periodical and book titles, are currently italicized and not underlined like before.
    In citations, URLs are no longer in need.

    MLA currently recommends writers to use only web addresses if the audience source is unlikely to be unavailable due to the URLs changeable nature.
    Zotero's MLA style does neither.

    As for the database citation requirements - we're aware of them, just not very enthusiastic about how and whether to include them in Zotero.
  • Are there any plans on making Zoteros Library Catalog field a CSL variable?

    I wouldn't mind if it was called 'catalog' or 'database' as long as I had access to the data.

    https://github.com/ajlyon/zotero-bits/issues/8

    At the University of East London we use a referencing system based on Harvard but with the need to add the name of the journal collections to our reference lists.

    Myself and several of my peers have been using a custom style which I developed for the last couple of years in anticipation of this change being made but it seems as though there are no plans for this to occur.

    @adamsmith

    "As for the database citation requirements - we're aware of them, just not very enthusiastic about how and whether to include them in Zotero."

    Hi, if you don't mind me asking, why not?
  • Hi, if you don't mind me asking, why not?
    because it's a stupid requirement, with no basis in reality. It doesn't matter where you get a copy (!) of an article from - whether it's pdf or xerox.
    I also have a strong suspicion that most people lie about this, because there is no discernible difference and they don't want to deal with that requirement. I flipped through a recent volume of PMLA (the MLA's flagship journal) and I found one citation to a journal article from JSTOR, the rest of the articles were all "Print". Of course, it could be that MLA scholars are just _really_ retro and love spending their time over old bound volumes of journals in the library even though they're on JSTOR/EBSCO - but I'm not buying that.
  • That said, we'll still probably deal with the ticket - almost none of the tickets on that site have been addressed, the general schedule is Zotero 3.5. I realize that just because it's stupid it won't go away.
  • @adamsmith

    Sorry, I didnt mean to upset you.

    The requirement is not there because Zotero users like myself feel it is necessary, it is there because the educational institution where we study demands it when assessing our work (last semester i was marked down for not including Library Catalog data in my reference list).

    http://www.uel.ac.uk/lls/support/harvard/

    I am not lying about this. I and many thousands of students have to use the system advocated in the book Cite Them Right, in fact on Page 22 of the book it states;

    "The great majority of electronic journals/newspapers available through library web pages are part of journal collections, for example Academic Search Complete, Ingentaconnect, JSTOR, Nexis UK, Proquestr, ScienceDirect. You should refer to the fact that you obtained the title online, because online versions sometimes omit sections found in the printed version, such as advertisements and letters from readers."

    It then states for citations add 'Name of collection (Italics)' for journals.

    As a result many of the students here use Endnote which is preinstalled on our systems, but I much prefer and advocate use of Zotero however haemorrhage supporters because of issues like this.
  • It's not you who upset me - it's stupid style requirements. I'm aware that they're not your fault, you asked why I am/we are not enthusiastic about implementing them.
    I'm also not claiming you (or anyone else) is lying about the existence of said requirements - obviously you're not - I'm arguing that the requirements are so moronic that scholars forced to use them are lying about where they obtain copies of journal articles. And I don't blame them.
    It's very unfortunate that UK academia (and it does seem that the use of Cite it Right is very widespread) has latched on to style requirements that don't correspond to the practice in any major journal in any discipline. And I find it bizarre that faculty goes along with that.
  • "It's not you who upset me - it's stupid style requirements."

    Thanks for clearing that up :)

    I agree with your comments. It is a moronic policy and probably influenced more by some economic decision to log use of databases than any true academic purpose.

    When my work was marked down because of this I was incensed but there was nothing I could do and now unless I include the DOI I have to enter the library catalog details manually which kind of defeats the object of using Zotero and writing a custom style. :(
  • We'll try to get this into Zotero 3.5. As I say, we realize it's happening and the fact that it's not just MLA any more, but that large chunks of the UK are apparently being browbeaten into citing databases should be a factor.

    There are also situations in which this _does_ make sense - see e.g. Frank's point about legal citations above.
  • edited March 14, 2012
    While I agree that the policy is moronic and further I find it obnoxious; I have questioned the policymakers about their reasons for this mandate. What I learned was interesting.

    It is to combat what L.J. Morrisey has called "hollow references" -- citing references that the author of the manuscript has not read. That is, they read some other paper that cited what seemed to be an interesting article and used the citation from the reference list as though they had actually read it. Morrisey and other researchers (M.V. Simkin and V.P. Roychowdhury) have done several studies and report that this is common -- particularly among students. They looked at papers that were cited incorrectly (wrong author order, wrong journal, wrong year, wrong page range, etc.) and found that the erroneous citations increased as the paper was cited year after year. The errors were not in bibliographic databases listing the original article. The errors were not such that they could have reasonably have occurred because typists made the same keyboard errors.

    I accept that this "hollow referencing" may be a problem but I have doubts that requiring the database from which the reference was drawn will do much to prevent this dishonest short-cut practice. What it can accomplish is that professors and reviewers can verify that the article is indeed included in the online bibliographic database -- but that is the limit of what this can do and I don't find that to be a good enough reason.
  • I wish you hadn't told me that. It's depressing on so many levels. Up next: papers have to be typed with a mechanical typewriter to prevent copy&paste. I'm going to curl up in a corner and cry now.
  • @ DWL-SDCA

    "the erroneous citations increased as the paper was cited year after year."

    That's horrific. Thanks for your input, I too am not sure that the database requirement is the best solution for this 'hollow referencing' problem but I now have a better understanding of the issue and appreciate the merits of their intent.

    After looking at the links on 'citation mutations' article posted by Rintze the conlusion that "it is possible that in the future the number of wrong citations can be minimised by using reference software tools - provided that the database entries are correct in the first place." leaves hope that tools like Zotero will hopefully gain more currency and help provide positive balance for the problem.

    @adamsmith

    Not only on a typwriter but with a hot wax seal to prove authenticity! But in all seriousness you are right on the point that fbennett makes.

    In law journals and others where a vendor may attach extra resources it actually makes sense.
  • If anyone wants to look a little further into this problem and how it can affect bibliographic databases; see pages 28-32 of my doctoral thesis on information-seeking behaviors of professionals and the information sources they use:

    www.safetylit.org/thesaurus/thesis-all.pdf

    By the way, I used Zotero.
  • @ DWL-SDCA

    Thank you for sharing your work on this issue. I found the information you presented both enlightening and scary at the same time!

    I was not even aware that there was a bibliometric discipline so your writing has encouraged me to take even more care with my citations.
  • In some cases the database is acting as an archive: collecting, restoring and making accessible otherwise rare or fragile material. I am thinking in particular about Dickens Journals Online, Nineteenth Century Periodicals Online, or others. In such cases it is especially important to correctly cite the database.

    This is to point out that the case you are using—databases such as JSTOR/EBSCO, which host otherwise currently available print journals—is indeed the least important case, but not the only one at issue here.
  • FWIW, library catalog can now be cited and is used for this purpose in the MLA style on the repository.
  • Perfect. Thank you.
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