 This video will explain the concept of containers as used in the MLA Handbook 9th edition, published in 2021. Citation styles provide a common formatting for scholars and users of information so that, once familiar with that formatting, we can quickly identify the author, the date published, the title, and other important bits of information about a work by simply looking at the citation. MLA Style has two basic concepts that help you understand the underlying structure of the citations. These concepts are core elements and information containers. In this video, we'll discuss containers and leave core elements for its own video. To explain the idea of containers, think of the citation like a mailing address on a letter. When addressing an envelope, you start with the most specific information, the name of the individual or group you are sending the letter to, and their individual street address. This is like the author and source title for a citation, but it's not enough information for the post office to deliver a dress like this. They need to know what city and state that address is in, or it's practically worthless. If the name and address are like the author and source title, then the city and state are like the container element in a citation. The container identifies the larger encompassing source where the individual source can be found. With an address, the house where you want your letter delivered is within the city, which is within the state. The containers get larger and larger with each element of the address. And in our article example, the author and title combine to indicate the specific source you want to cite, and the container is the journal the article was published in, along with helpful details like volume and issue number. So the smaller item or source the article is contained within the larger source, the journal. To make this even more fun, let's add a second container. If you found your journal article online in a library database, that database is a second container that encompasses the first container. The source or article is within the journal, which is found in the database. Going back to our letter, a second container would be added by addressing your letter from another country, with the country name added to the bottom of the address. There is one more concept to cover with containers in MLA style. What if the smallest specific source doesn't have any added container? MLA calls this a self-contained source. Examples of self-contained sources might be a book, a film, or a painting seen in person. If you are citing any of these sources, there is no larger container that they are within. And now, you know all about containers in MLA style. For more resources on citing in MLA style, see the Kirkwood Library website.