What is a citation?

And no, we're not talking about a traffic ticket! 

A citation is a list of all the information needed to track down a particular resource.  Different types of sources require different information to find it.  For example, if you are looking for a journal or magazine article, you would want to include:  the author of the article, the name of the journal or magazine (aka: the source); the volume, date, and page numbers, etc.  But you wouldn't use page numbers if you were citing a movie -- since movies don't have page numbers!

Helpful Tip > > Keep track of your citations!

Most databases (including our library catalog) allow you to make a list of citations and then save them email them to yourself, print them, or save them to a disk. 
This can save you a lot of time when you go to put your bibliography together.