MLA Citation Resources

Common Web Resources Citation Guide – MLA format

 

Some basic examples for citing web sites are listed below. If you you have any questions, please contact a friendly librarian. 

Click on the links below to go to a particular section:

Basic Web Sources (Single Container)

Ebooks and Journals on the Web

Reports and Publications from Corporate authors, Government Publications, and Non-Governmental Organizations

Photos, Art (not originally posted on the web), TV, TED Talks and Film

Artificial Intelligence/Chatbot outputs

 

General Information on Web Sites in MLA:

If there is no author, skip and go to the next item in the sequence, in this case the title of the source (web page or article). If there is no web page or article title skip and go to the next item in the sequence, the website title. Put as many of the 9 Core Elements into the citation as are available and relevant. See the Sample Citations below for guidelines. *Note that MLA requires URLs for web resources. Be sure to remove the http:// or https:// from your URL. The date of access is optional. Ask your instructor for guidance.* Do not use shortened URLs from 3rd parties (bit.ly, tinyurl, etc.) in your citations as they are not always stable. Always use the full URL instead.

Citation format for basic web sources (single container):

Author’s Last Name, First Name. “Title of individual web page or article.” Title of Overall Web Site (Container).

              Publisher/Sponsor of the Site, (only needed if different from the title of the Web site or author.

              Not required for online newspapers or magazines)  Publication date, Location(URL).

Basic Web Sites (single container):

“Baseball Cards 1887 – 1914.” Library of Congress, 2 Aug. 1999, 

https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/baseball-across-a-changing-nation/     

“Builder.” I Can Has Cheezburger, 2016, http://builder.cheezburger.com/Builder.

King, Hope. "Microsoft is Giving Minecraft to Schools for Free -- Here's Why." CNNMoney, 9 June

               2016, http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/09/technology/minecraft-microsoft/index.html.

Wachter, Paul. “Recession Dashes Restaurant Hopes.” The Atlantic, 14 Sep. 2009, http://www.theatlantic.com/

                health/archive/2009/09/recession-dashes-restaurant-hopes/246.

Works on the Web with complex details (includes print publication information) and/or more than one container (includes journal articles, government reports, television programs) Include as many of the Core Elements as needed to help your readers locate and identify your source. Use the detailed examples listed below as guides. General Citation Format for complex web sources: Author’s Last Name, First Name. “Title of individual web page or article.” Title of work/journal (Container),             Other contributors (if applicable), Version (if applicable), Number (if applicable),  Publisher (if             applicable), Publication date,  Location (pages) (if applicable), Title of Website/database (Container             2), Other contributors (if applicable) Publication date (if applicable), Location (URL or DOI). A DOI is a Digital Object Identifier. Unlike many URLs, it is stable and is designed to be a permanent link to the document. Use it whenever possible instead of the URL for that reason. When using URLs, choose a permalink or other stable URL whenever possible. You can generally find the stable URL by clicking the "share" link or icon:   See our  short video Finding Stable URLs for more information.

 Ebooks on the Web:

Author’s last name, first name. Title of Book. Other contributors (if applicable), Version (if applicable),

            Publication date, Location (pages) [if applicable]. Title of website/database/online container (Container

           2), Other contributors to the online container (if applicable), Location (URL or DOI).

Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.” Leaves of Grass, 1891-92, pp. 29-79. Walt Whitman Archive,

edited by Ed Folsom and Kenneth M. Price, http://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/27.

Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Millennium fulcrum edition 3.0, 14 July 2014, Project Gutenberg,

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11/11-h/11-h.htm.

Journal Articles on the Web:

Author’s last name, first name. “Article Title.” Title of Journal (Container), Volume. Issue number,

             Publication date,  Location (Page numbers) [if applicable], Title of website/database/online container

           (Container 2), Location (use DOI if available, otherwise use URL).

Papachristos, Andrew V., et al. “More Coffee, Less Crime? The Relationship between

Gentrification and Neighborhood Crime Rates in Chicago, 1991 to 2005.” City and Community, vol. 10, no. 17

Aug. 2011, pp. 215-240. Wiley Online Library, doi: 10.1111/j.1540-6040.2011.01371.x.

 

Online Reports from Governmental & Non-Governmental Organizations (use *only* for reports. For Government/Corporate/Non-Governmental Organization web pages, use the basic web page format above):

Named Individual Author(s)

Author’s last name, first name. Title of Source/Report. Publisher, Publication date, Location

         (URL or DOI).

DeNavas-Walt, Carmen, and Bernadette D. Proctor. Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014.

           United States Census Bureau, Sep. 2015, http://www.census.gov content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/

           p60-252.pdf.

Government/Non-Governmental/Corporate Author when the corporate author is also the publisher

In cases where the corporate author and the publisher are the same, omit the corporate author and begin with the source title.

Title of Source/Report. Publisher, Publication date, Location (URL or DOI).

Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014,

           http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/.  

Government/Non-Government Organization/Corporate Author where the publisher is *not* identical to the corporate author:

If the corporate author and the publisher are not the same, or if there is a co-author, list the author(s). 

Corporate Author(s). Title of Source/Report. Publisher, Publication date, Location (URL or DOI).

Inter-Parliamentary Union. From Exclusion to Equality: Realizing the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. United Nations,

         2007. doi: 10.18356/46bfff7d-en. 

WWF/Dalberg. The Economic Value of Virunga National Park. WWF International, 2013. 

          http://dalberg.com/documents/the_economic_value_of_virunga_national_park.pdf

Photographs/Art not originally posted on the web. (Use for Museum and Library collections where the original piece is housed offline):

Artist’s Last Name, First Name. Title of Work. Creation date. Collection where it is housed (Container),

         Location of  Collection (if avail.). Title of website/Online container, (Container 2). Location (URL).

Klee, Paul. Remembrance of a Garden. 1914. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf.

            Artchive, http://www.artchive.com/artchive/K/klee/garden.jpg.html. 

For citing images from Image Sharing Websites (Picasa, Flickr, etc.), see the Social Media/User Generated Sources MLA Citation guide.

 

Television/ Video Program on Hulu, YouTube, etc:

“Title of Episode/Show.” Title of Program/Series (Container),  Other contributors (performers, directors,

           creators, if important to the context of your project), Season, episode (if avail.), Publisher/Producer

           of Program, Publication/posting date, Title of larger container [Hulu, YouTube, website,

          etc.], Other contributors (if avail.), Location (URL). Date of Access (optional; useful if media may not be

          permanently available).

“Dark Side of the Moone.” Moone Boy, created by Chris O’Dowd, season 1, episode 4, Hulu Original Series,14 Sep.

             2012, Hulu, http://www.hulu.com/watch/469240. Accessed 20 June 2016.

“Alexander Hamilton.” YouTube. Uploaded by Ronald Blumer, 5 Mar. 2015,  http://youtu.be/TLqf08oZIzk. Accessed 17

             June 2016.

TED Talk (from TED Website):

Presenter's Last Name, First Name. "Title of Talk."  TED (Container), Date Recorded, Location (URL).

Pacholke, Dan. "How Prisons Can Help Inmates Live Meaningful Lives." TED, Mar. 2014, 

            https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pacholke_how_prisons_can_help_inmates_live_meaningful_lives. 

Film (not originally posted on the web but watched online):

MLA citation style is designed to be flexible, so depending on the nature of your project, you may choose to emphasize different core elements in different contexts. For example, a paper about character development would benefit from a detailed citation entry for a film. That citation might include information about the director and/or performer(s) in the Other Contributors section, while the same film used for its informational content would not need to highlight these features.

Title of Film. Other contributors (director, performers, if important to the context of your assignment), Publisher,

            Publication date, Title of container (Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, Website, etc.), Location (URL), Date

           of Access (optional; useful if media might not be permanently available).

Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows. Directed by Paul Jay, National Film Board of Canada, 1998, National Film Board of

            Canada, http://nfb.ca/film/hitman_hart_wrestling_with_shadows. Accessed 17 June 2016.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Directed by Jonathan Liebesman, Paramount, 2014, Hulu, 

            http://hulu.com/watch/850384. Accessed 21 June 2016.

For citing video produced specifically for Video Sharing Websites (Vimeo, DailyMotion, YouTube, etc.), see the Social Media/User Generated Sources MLA Citation guide.

Artificial Intelligence outputs (Including chatbots):

If you are using the output of AI, such as a chatbot, MLA recommends you "cite the platform on which you interacted with the program and the author of the program if you find one listed." For example, if you interact with the Socrates character on the Character.AI site, you would credit the creator responsible for the character (@kayslay). If the name of the chatbot and the platform are the same, italicize the platform name. If you are interested in citing AI code you used, please see the MLA's advice on citing source code.

Author/Creator (if known). "Name of chatbot." Title of platform where you accessed it, Location (URL), Date

           of Access (optional but useful as software is updated frequently).

@kayslay. "Socrates." Character.AI, https://beta.character.ai/. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.

OpenAI. ChatCPT, https://chat.openai.com/chat. Accessed 12 Jan. 2022.