 Welcome to the Kirkwood Community College Library's Help Anytime video series. I'm Kate Hess, librarian at Kirkwood. In a previous video in this series, you learned about work-sided lists and how to format citations. This video will give you some help specifically in finding the bits of information you need to create a citation for a website. Remember that you should always follow the instructions and requirements of your instructor and that you will need to consult a printed style guide when creating your citations. We'll start with three basic guidelines to follow when citing an online source. First, we recommend that you either save or print any webpage you think you'll later need to cite as you do your research. You never know when the information you're accessing might move or be removed. Second, citing an online source can be tricky and the information you need is sometimes difficult to find. Aim to be as complete as possible with the information that's available to you. If a piece of information such as the author or date isn't there, consult your style guide for directions on how to handle this. Third, when creating citations, especially for websites, you sometimes need to improvise by combining elements from different patterns, such as a book pattern combined with a website pattern. Aim to be consistent citing each similar type of item in the same way. So what kind of information will you need to find when citing an online source? It's the same basic pieces of information you need to cite a print publication, with a few changes thrown in to account for the different format and the ever-changing nature of the web. As with print publications, the author will come first. This individual or group may be called the author, compiler, or something similar. This name or names is most likely to be found near the top of the page, beneath any general navigation links or buttons, or near the bottom of the page, just under the article, chart, video, or whatever content you're using. You'll also need to figure out the title of the item. This should be found at the beginning of the content you're using and should also be fairly prominent. But in case the title is not so easy to find, check the title bar at the very top of your browser window. As mentioned before, you may need to improvise here. The title bar says how stuff works, then how gas prices work in quotation marks. That's confirmation that the title of the article is how gas prices work. There is a second title that may need to be included as well, the title of the overall website. If the page you're citing doesn't include the title of the overall site, try clicking on a home button or link. This should take you to the larger site your page is a part of. Check your style guide to see when you need to include the title of the overall website. The publisher or sponsor of the site may also need to be included in your citation. This sponsor name may be any number of things, but most commonly it's the name of a company, a college or university, or a non-profit organization. You may find this information at the very bottom of the page or sometimes on the home page of the site. It may say sponsored by, about us, or may appear next to the copyright date. There are two dates you'll need to make note of. The date the information was published and the date you accessed it. The date of publication should be obvious if it's there. Look in the same place as you look for an author at the top and bottom of the page. Often the date of publication is not given, in which case you will make the notation nd for no date in the space where the date would normally be in your citation. See your style guide for specific instructions on how to do this. The date of access is one of the bits of information you include only in citations for web publications and not for printed publications. As you might have guessed this is because information on a web page can change from moment to moment. Giving the date of access is a way of noting what version of the page you are using, sort of like giving the addition number when you're citing a book. For MLA style you will also include the format. In the case of websites the format is simply web. The need to include the URL in your citation will vary. In MLA format the URL is not required but is suggested when your audience may not otherwise be able to find the page by using a search engine. This is often the case with something found in a database. The URL may also be specifically required by your instructor. In MLA format the URL of the page is typically included unless it's too long to be accurate or usable. In this case a database name or the path from the home page may be given instead. Once again consult your style guide on the specifics. One final note, when citing an article from an online database such as EPSCO host, you will follow a citation pattern specific to articles found in subscription databases which combines the pattern for an article with a pattern for a website. Remember to refer to your style guide for specifics and to follow the instructions given by your instructor. And as always the campus writing centers are great places to get help with building your citations.