Web-based research projects, like traditional research papers, must strictly
observe scholarly conventions with respect to the citation of sources.
In addition to a bibliography, then, authors should provide a citation,
in the form of an endnote, at every point in their website where they
quote or paraphrase the ideas of another person. A failure to provide
proper attribution for "borrowed" ideas constitutes plagiarism,
a serious academic offense.
Citing Text | Citing
All of the endnotes for your project should be included on a "Notes"
page which, like the annotated bibliography,
should be accessible from the front page of the project site. Note numbers
within the text of the project should be displayed as superscripted
clickable links, like the one at the end of this sentence.12
Clicking on a note number should take the reader directly to the appropriate
citation on the "Notes" page by means of an anchored link. See the sample
page provided here for an example of how this should work. An acceptable
alternative to the "Notes" page is to use "pop-up"
notes (full citations appearing in a small, separate window), such as
those provided in the Eighteenth-Century
Here are a few additional points to bear in mind in preparing citations
for your web project:
- On the "Notes" page (or in your pop-up notes), the citations themselves
should be formatted according to the Chicago
Style. The first
citation of a given work must provide full author, title, publication,
and page information; subsequent
citations of the same work may use an abbreviated form (do not,
however, use "Ibid" or "Op. Cit.). Follow the links provided here
for detailed examples of the correct form for both types of notes.
- Any reference to another website in the notes should be provided
as a clickable link.
- Notes for the entire project should be numbered in one continuous
sequence, as opposed to beginning again with a new #1 in each new
section of the site.
- Avoid excessive note numbers by grouping adjacent citations for
one source together in a single note. For example, if two or three
contiguous sentences in a single paragraph all draw upon the same
passage in one source, a single citation at the end of the last of
these sentences will suffice.
For the purposes of an academic website, any non-trivial image that
is not an original creation of the author constitutes a borrowed idea
and should be attributed accordingly. There are two acceptable ways
of achieving this:
- Provide a caption under the image itself, listing the author, title,
and source of the image.
- Link the image itself to a separate page containing an enlarged
version of the same image together with author, title, and source
information. This technique is especially useful if there are interesting
or important details in the image that are lost in reducing it to
a smaller format. See the sample page
provided here for examples of how this method works.
Determining whether or not an image requires attribution will often
be a matter of personal judgement. A useful rule of thumb might be this:
if an image contributes materially to the ideas presented in the site,
or a reader might reasonably wish to know the source of an image in
order to pursue these ideas further, then it should be attributed.
According to this rule, the following types of image would require
- Any photograph, painting, or other work of art whose subject matter
is connected to the topic of your site
- Any reproduction of primary source material, such as a page of an
eighteenth-century book or newspaper
- Portraits of historical figures discussed in your site
- Reproductions of eighteenth-century drawings or caricatures
- A web-page background based on an eighteenth-century tapestry design,
if the topic of the site has anything to do with design or the visual
The following types of image, similarly would probably not require
- An image of an English flag used as a navigational button
- Freely available "clip art" icons
- A snapshot of yourself on the site's "Credits" page
- A background image that has nothing to do historically with the
content of your site
If in doubt, please consult your instructor, or simply err on the side
of caution and provide the attribution.
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