Citing sources — what’s *really* important?
You may know that two major style manuals — APA and MLA — have released new editions in the last six or so months. And if you’re aware of that fact, you’re undoubtedly aware that both editions include changes, errors (that’s right — errors! APA is currently replacing copies with an error-free second printing), and inconsistencies that have perplexed and frustrated librarians, students and faculty members alike.
There are resources in place to help navigate the murky waters — APA maintains a blog that provides examples and attempts to explain the more complicated rules, and Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) has online resources for APA and MLA that received 3.5 million and 2.5 million hits, respectively, in September and October alone, according to OWL’s coordinator.
From these stats alone, it’s evident that librarians are spending countless hours maintaining online resources, and students and faculty members are spending even more time drafting manuscripts that comply with the standards set by MLA, APA, CSE and enumerable others.
But, as Barbara Fister posits in her ACRLog post, is this time well spent? Is research somehow made more valid, more noteworthy, when its footnotes are perfectly formatted, the works cited page spaced just so? Or have we spent so much time counting commas and tracking down database names that we’ve missed the whole point of citing sources — to credit those whose work we build upon and to make it as easy as possible for our readers to learn more about that work?
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