What Source Is This?
What Type of Source Is This?
To identify the correct MLA elements needed for your citations, you first need to know what type of source you have. Looking at a source’s visual clues can help you figure this out.
Sources come in many different publication types, such as:
- Books: either print or ebooks from library subscription databases or freely online
- Articles: magazine or journal articles from library databases or freely online
- Videos: from streaming services, DVDs
- Newspaper articles: from the news website or a library database
and so on…
Other sources exist only electronically, such as blogs, websites, and individual web pages.
Key Takeaway
Identifying the publication type of a source is difficult since many publications now live natively online (i.e.) they were never created in a printed format. So, it can be confusing to distinguish between different online publications. Is it a book? A magazine? A newspaper? To help, we will go through some examples of source types and clues to look for.
Using Clues to Identify Types of Sources: Books and Ebooks
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Works cited:
Harper, David. Exposing the Reich: How Hitler Captivated and Corrupted the German People. Rowman & Littlefield, 2023.
