A committee of faculty and administrators recently updated the College's guide to attributing sources to reflect current writing trends and posted the guide on the Internet.
Chaired by Earth Sciences Professor Gary Johnson and History Professor Richard Kremer, the committee rewrote "Sources: Their Use and Acknowledgment" to offer more examples of citation formats and styles covering the range of writing practices across all disciplines.
The committee also created an online edition. Sources Online is a webpage that includes a discussion area where students can post their citation questions.
Citation issues may also be debated from the site. In addition, via this webpage, faculty can post special citation requests for their students, according to committee member Sarah Horton, who is also a multimedia applications specialist at Computing Services.
The College is not alone in emphasizing the importance of proper crediting of sources, although it is one of the few colleges nationwide to have made citation regulations so readily accessible, Horton said.
Dartmouth and the vast majority of other educational institutions share the same general citation regulations, and other colleges and universities are now discovering the benefits of forming similar committees to revise and distribute citation information, she said.
Other committee members are acting Senior Associate Dean Katherine Burke, Assistant Dean of the Faculty Sheila Culbert, Physical Sciences Librarian Barbara DeFelice and English Professor Patricia McKee.
The College first published Sources in 1960, and revised it in 1987 to include the parenthetical format. Electronic sources were first included in the booklet in the mid-1990s.
Sources Online may be accessed at www.dartmouth.edu/~sources.
