Reliable vs.

Unreliable Sources
■ Reliable Sources = TRUSTWORTHY SOURCES
– Written by experts in that particular field

■ Unreliable Sources = SOURCES THAT CAN BE

ALTERED BY ANYONE
– sources, such as Wikipedia, are not reliable because
the authors may not have a thorough knowledge or
full understanding of a topic
 Example of Reliable Sources
• Book
• Newspapers and magazines
• Peer reviewed journals
• Peer reviewed articles
• PhD or MBA dissertations and research
• Public library
• Scholarly articles
 How will I KNOW if its RELIABLE??

■ To determine reliability of online sites and organizations, look at the

URL’s ending:
– If the site ends in .edu, it is most likely a reliable educational institution.
– If the site ends in .gov, it is most likely a reliable government website. These sites usually
provide good sources for statistics and objective reports.
– If the site ends in .org, it is usually a reliable non-profit organization.

■ News sources:
– Every television and print news source has a website
– Beware! Sometimes their focus is to entertain rather than inform**

WITH ANY SOURCE YOU MUST CHECK THE AUTHOR TO DETERMINE

RELIABILITY
 Examples of Unreliable Sources
• Wikipedia: although this is a good starting point for finding initial ideas about a topic,
some of their information and attached resources may not be reliable
• Blogs, tweets
• Personal websites
• Forums
• Sites created by organizations that may have political or biased agendas
• Sites that provide biased information
• Self-published sources
• Opinionated articles such as editorials
• Online sources with an URL that ends in html, which is the basic building blocks of web
pages
• Some online sources with an URL that end in .com are unreliable:
• Sites of companies that conduct their business over the internet. Some of these sites are unreliable
because they have hidden agendas.
• THINK: are they trying to sell me something? A product? An idea?
 Works Cited
■ You need FIVE citations in MLA format on your works cited page.

■ Your entries need to be in Alphabetical order based off of the first

word in the entry

■ If the entry goes past the first line, you need to make a hanging
indention. This is done by pressing “enter” and then “tab”

Hudson, Elizabeth. “Hanging Out with the Bats.” Texas

Highways August 1994; Pages 14-19.
 How to format entries…
Book, one author:
■ Last name, First name. Title of Book. Place of Publication: Publishing
Company, year of publication.

■ WORKS CITED ENTRY EXAMPLE

– Weinburg, Steven. Dreams of a Final Theory. New York: Pantheon, 1992.

■ PARENTHTICAL CITATION EXAMPLE:

One may see how “all logical arguments can be defeated by the simple refusal to reason
logically”  (Weinburg 25).

– Parenthetical citations are simply you stating where you found this information in
the actual paper. Anything that did not come from your brain will have a
 How to format entries…
General Webpage:
■ Title of Page. Date page was published. Organization or Owner of Page. Date you
accessed the page. <entire URL>

■ WORKS CITED ENTRY EXAMPLE:

Space Telescope Science Institute Home Page. 20 November, 1997. NASA. 28 October, 2004.
<http://www.stici.edu>.
– NOTE: If you are struggling to identify a page title, look at the internet tab at the top of your
page.
■ PARENTHETICAL CITATION EXAMPLE:
Through ample research, one will discover how the goal of the Office of Public Outreach is to “[meet] the
needs of the general public and science communicators by connecting to three user communities: news
media, online audiences, and venues offering in-person interactions” (Space Telescope Science).
– This should be the first word for few words in the Works Cited Entry, which will usually be the
title of the page.
 How to format entries…
An article from an online database:
■ Last name, first name. “Article Title.” Original Journal from Which it Came.
Edition or Volume number. (Year of publication): Page numbers. Title of Database.
Web. Access Date.

■ WORKS CITED ENTRY EXAMPLE:

Langhamer, Claire. “Love and Courtship in Mid-Twentieth-Century England.” Historical
Journal. 50.1 (2007): 173-96. ProQuest. Web. 27 May, 2009.

■ PARENTHETICAL CITATION EXAMPLE:

(Langhamer 25)—If author not given, give the title of the article in quotation marks inside the
parentheses.
 WHAT YOU NEED IN LAB

■ Google Scholar
■ Destiny
■ NC Wise Owl

PAY ATTENTION TO THE WEBSITES MRS. STRANGE SHOWS YOU

Scholarly, peer-reviewed articles and books

Work Cited

Austin Peay State University. “Reliable and Unreliable

Sources”. Academic Support Center Writing Lab. Oct 29
2012. Web.