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ITA 212/HST 320-03: Contemporary Italian History through Film II

About This Page

Here you will find information on using the Chicago guide for citations, the style most commonly used in History courses at UMass Dartmouth. 

Documenting your research completely, accurately, and in a correct format is essential.  Information on avoiding plagiarism, and a link to Zotero, a program that allows you to create a personalized bibliographic database also appear on this page.

Managing Citations & Digital Files

Having an effective strategy to manage your research is essential. You can use a citation management tool to organize citations to sources, collect digital files such as full-text PDFs, and cite sources automatically when writing papers.

The library provides support for Zotero, a free open-source citation manager.  

Citation Management with Zotero

Why should you use Zotero?

  • It's free, so you'll be able to use it forever, even after you leave the university.
  • It saves your digital files to your computer and backs them up in the cloud.
  • It works seamlessly with Microsoft Word.
  • It can also be used with Google Docs, LibreOffice, LaTeX, and other text editors.
  • It automates a lot of processes, like attaching PDFs, that require extra steps in RefWorks.

Plagiarism FAQs

UMassD Academic Regulations and Procedures - Read this passage from your student handbook!

Avoiding Plagiarism - OWL Guide from Purdue - This emphasizes when to give credit to sources and offers safe practices to follow.

Using the Chicago Manual

Research in the Humanities uses a variety of citation styles, and your professor will tell you which style they want you to use in your papers for their classes.

In this class, the preferred style is Chicago. We have a copy of the most recent edition available for in-person consultation at the Reference Desk, and this guide directs you to some of the best known web-based Chicago resources. 

Information on other citation styles can be found on the library's "Citing Sources" page.

Here are some commonly used style manuals:

Citing Films

Citing films typically entails a different set of problems from books, and the conventions are different. It's always best to check with your instructor first regarding his or her individual requirements.

Chicago style states that citations for recorded media, such as film, should include the following information as appropriate: name of the person primarily responsible for the content of the recording (composer, writer, performer, etc.),a title, recording company or publisher’s name, identifying number, an indication of medium (DVD, videocassette, etc.), and a copyright and/or production/performance date. Entries for recorded material found online should also include a DOI or URL.

There are two specific issues you need to keep in mind when you are citing a film entry:

  1. If you are citing supplementary content from a DVD such as an essay or director's commentary, you should consider creating a works cited entry, and not simply list it as the film itself; 
  2. It is a very good idea to be clear which version of a particular film you viewed and are therefore citing. Many films are released in different versions for different markets and thus do not even necessarily contain identical footage. F. W. Murnau's Faust (1926), like many films of the silent era, had separate domestic and export negatives constructed from different takes entirely. Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan (1964) was released in a 182-minute version in Japan but was initially released in the U.S. in a 125-minute version missing one of its four episodes, and is currently distributed on video in the US in a 161-minute version that is still shortened and re-edited but contains all four episodes. And with the advent of DVD, it is not uncommon for films to have footage added or removed specifically for the DVD release, as opposed to the theatrical release.

(Text adapted from Emory University Libraries

Librarian

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Sonia Pacheco
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