Instructions for Note Cards

Note Cards, instructions

1. For each source (that could mean a book, audio source, article, news story, Web site, or interview) you need to have a bibliography card.

This card should have all the information you can gather about the book. Don't worry, you only have to do this once per source.

Some information you will want to include, when possible:

Title

Author

Publisher (this might be a book publisher, a magazine or newspaper, or a Web site)

Date of publication (any source without a date may not be one you can use, check with me)

Page numbers used (if you're not using the whole book, magazine, or Web page – and you usually won't be)

You may include an ISBN if you think it will be useful for identifying the source later

2. As you read each source, you will write information on the cards. You will only have one piece of information on each card. If it is a quotation, make sure you use quotation marks and attribution (tell who said it, if it's a quote within the book. You don't need an attribution if it's the author himself).

Sometimes it is hard to tell how much to put on a card – don't worry, it's no big deal if it's not perfect. You are later going to take these cards and put them into piles that match the parts of your paper, so the facts will all get shuffled around. If you have two facts that have to be in different piles, you'll have to make new cards later, so try to keep it to one fact per card. But don't go card-wild – if you have one magazine article and 70 cards, you're going too far!

Write the cards in your own words unless you are quoting with quotation marks. It's all right to paraphrase at this point, later I'll ask you to not even do that.

Remind me in class to talk about paraphrasing, plagiarism, and writing your own paper, and what the difference is!

One each card with info, you need to put a note to remind you where the info came from. This is especially important for footnoting later. So in the corner, put the source name (or an abbreviation of it) and, if necessary, the author (if two book titles sound alike, use the author name instead). Write the exact page or section where you found the information. You should be able to go back to your note cards in 20 years and figure out exactly where a piece of information came from, if you had to.