Learning and Demonstrating Skills to Avoid Plagiarism
INFORMATION LITERACY STANDARDS
“Standard 1 The student who is information literate accesses information efficiently and
effectively.
Standard 8 The student who contributes positively to the learning community and to
society is information literate and practices ethical behavior in regard to information and
information technology.” (AASL)
Goals:
Students will be able to access: information from the print collection at Mira Costa High
School, from Manhattan Beach Public Library’s electronic database, and from the
Internet on an assigned topic.
Students will be able to gather bibliographic information from each source accessed.
And students will be able to use the bibliographic information gathered and create a
MLA style Works Cited Page.
Assignment Overview:
Locating reliable information for personal curiosity or for school assignments requires
more than searching the Internet with Google. In today’s assignment you will locate
sources of information on an assigned topic, gather and record bibliographic
information from each source, and use the sources’ information to create an MLA style
Works Cited page. You will be graded according to the assignment’s rubric.
Citing Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
“In academic communities, the ethics of research demand that writers be credited for
their work and their ideas. Not to do so is to plagiarize, to intentionally or
unintentionally take the ideas, language, or work of another without sufficient
acknowledgement that such material is not one's own.
Whenever you quote, paraphrase, summarize, or otherwise refer to the work of
another, you are required to cite its source, by way of parenthetical citation and by a
citation in a Works Cited Page.” (“Citing Sources”)
Manhattan Beach Unified School District Policy – Academic Honesty
The Governing Board believes that academic honesty and personal integrity are
fundamental components of a student's education and character development. The
Board expects that students will respect the educational purpose underlying all school
activities, and that students will not cheat, lie, plagiarize, or commit other acts of
academic dishonesty.
All students need to prove to themselves that they can do successful work as a result of
their own efforts.
adopted: September 5, 2007
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Tools for student use:
 OPAC, Mira Costa High School Library’s database of books;
 Manhattan Beach Public Library - InfoTrac OneFile (News and Magazines) found
at http://www.colapublib.org/periodicals/index.html
 Historical New York Times http://www.proquestk12.com/
 Landmark’s Citation Machine. http://citationmachine.net/
 Bibliographic Information Worksheet
 MLA Works Cited Page style guide
 Works Cited Rubric
Deliverables:
To successfully complete this assignment you will give to Mr. Henderson, for grading,
the following items. On top place the rubric, underneath and in this order, a perfectly
formatted Works Cited Page and the completed Bibliographic Information Worksheet.
Directions:
Search 1 – OPAC Search (You must use a computer on campus for this search)
Use OPAC to locate a book in Mira Costa’s library on your assigned topic.
 click on [Start]
 highlight [Programs]
 highlight [Library]
 highlight [Catalog]
 select [OPAC].
 type in your topic in the search box and click on the keyword button.
 Pick any book on your topic. Double click on the title to open the full
record.
 Copy the bibliographic information needed to create an MLA citation on to the
Book Bibliography portion of the Bibliographic Information Worksheet.
 CLOSE THE CATALOG ONCE YOU HAVE COPIED THE CITATION INFORMATION.
Searchs 2 & 3 - ONLINE DATABASES You may reach the online databases from home.
Online databases provide digitized print sources in an electronic form.
Database/Subscription companies scan articles from books, magazines, journals and
newspapers and STORE the articles on Internet connected servers.
Although it looks like you are using the Internet, you are really browsing through print
articles. Online databases are good because they combine the quality of an editorially
supervised print source, but are easy to search like the Internet.
 From a school
computer, open a web browser by clicking on
the Internet
Explorer Icon on your desktop. This will display
the MCHS page.
 Click on the Library link.
 If you are searching from home, open a web browser window and key in the URL
www.mclibrary.homestead.com. This will open the library page.
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From the library page, click on the Online Databases link.
Click the link for the Manhattan Beach Public Library Databases.
In the right hand column, click on the Find Magazine and Newspaper Articles
link.
For search 2, click on the Magazines and Newspaper Indexes.
Choose InfoTrac OneFile (News and Magazines) a.k.a. General OneFile
In the library ID box enter: 1111652201702
Search 2 - ONLINE DATABASES – Subject Search- Subdivisions
InfoTrac OneFile automatically starts you in a keyword search.
 Change from a basic search by clicking in the search selection bar to a Subject
Guide Search.
 To find articles on your subject, type your topic in the search box and click
[Search].
Notice: you may choose to click in the boxes for searching full text articles, not
abstracts, and for peer-reviewed publications.
InfoTrac OneFile offers a valuable aid to searchers. It gives you subdivisions of
subjects. The subdivisions of subjects break down big topics into smaller categories so
you don’t have to waste your time looking at articles you don’t need. On the light blue
bar, next to basic search is subject guide search, click on the [subject guide search]
link and an alphabetical list of subdivisions will be available.
For example, if all you wanted was an analysis of the subject homelessness, you have
fewer articles to read instead of all the articles available on homelessness.
When you click on your selected subdivision, the articles will be listed.
Using
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the subject guide search, seek out an article on your topic.
Use the [Subdivisions] link to choose the subdivision analysis.
Choose by clicking any article within the subdivision analysis.
Copy the bibliographic information needed to create an MLA citation on to the
Online Database Bibliography portion of the Bibliographic Information
Worksheet.
Search 3: ONLINE DATABASES – Historical New York Times
 From the library page, click on the Online Databases link.
 Click the link for the HISTORICAL NEW YORK TIMES. This will take you to
ProQuest K-12.
Under Product Login
 Enter the user name: [CA2417H]
 Enter the password: [2162]
 Select: [ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Graphical)]
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On the right column enter your birthday [MM/DD/YYYY] into the search box in
“What Happened on…” Click [Search]
 Choose any article with a citation link. Click [Citation]
 Record the information required to format a citation for the newspaper article
you accessed on the Newspaper portion of the Bibliographic Information
Worksheet.
Search 4: Internet Search
Using any search engine of your choice, look for a website article on your topic.
 Choose any website article listed.
 Copy the bibliographic information needed to create an MLA citation on to the
Internet Web Site Bibliography portion of the Bibliographic Information
Worksheet.
 But in many cases, you will not find all this information. However, three
bibliographic pieces of information are required:
Article Title
Date of Access
URL
Formatting the bibliographic information into MLA style citations
Congratulations! You have finished all of your searches. You are now ready to
compile your Works Cited page. On the library page is a great website that helps
you format MLA style citations for entry onto the Works Cited page. Return to the
Library home page, and click on the CITE HELP link in the left-hand column. Listed
are several links.
 Click on the Landmark’s Citation Machine.
 Click on the MLA link because that is the format you will be using for this
assignment. Later you may click on the bibliographic format your teacher
requires.
 Under the MLA heading select more. This will expand the list of types of sources
you may choose from.
 Click on the material type you are using, print for the book from MCHS library’s
OPAC or nonprint for Work from a Subscription Service or Web Document.
 THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP. If you pick the correct material type,
the correct worksheet will be displayed.
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From the Bibliographic Information Worksheet you will fill in the appropriate
bibliographic information, the Citation Machine will create a perfect citation
for you.
Press the submit box.
The shaded box displays the citation. There is also an example below the
shaded box which shows you how it should look in your Works Cited page. This
format is called a hanging indent.
Copy the MLA formatted citations onto a MS Word Document titled,
Works Cited
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Hint:
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For the book citation, choose the print list, and then pick Book.
For the General OneFile citation, choose the nonprint list, and then pick Works
from a Subscription Service.
For the Internet citation, you will need to decide if your source is a web page,
Internet encyclopedia, or online article from the nonprint list.
“When creating your Works Cited Page, remember to:
 Set the page margins to one inch, top, bottom, and each side.
 Begin the Works Cited on a new page, but number consecutively (i.e., if the last
page of your essay is page 3, the Works Cited is page 4)
 Title the page Works Cited (not Bibliography), at the top of a new page,
centered.
 Set paragraph spacing to double-space all entries
 List all citations in alphabetical order. That will be the author’s last name, or if
there is not an author, the title (not counting The, An, A).
 Underline all titles of books, magazines, films, etc.
 Put quotation marks around the titles of poems, short stories, and articles.
 Indent the 2nd line, the 3rd line, and all subsequent lines of each citation using
the hanging indent function under [format] [paragraphs].” (UW-Madison
Writing Center)
Use the Works Cited Rubric to verify you will receive full credit for your good work.
Your activity is not complete without your name, your teacher’s name and period as a
header on the top left portion of each page.
Yipee! You have successfully completed this activity.
Print, staple in this order, and turn in:
Part 1:
Works Cited Rubric
Part 2:
A Works Cited page with 4 citations in MLA format.
Part 3: Must be on a separate page
 Bibliographic information from searches completed on the Bibliographic
Information Worksheet.
 (1- OPAC catalog, 2-General OneFile, 1- Internet)
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Works Cited
American Association of School Librarians Association for Educational Communications and
Technology. INFORMATION LITERACY STANDARDS FOR STUDENT
LEARNING. 1998. American Library Association. 1 Sep 2008
<http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslproftools/informationpower/InformationLiteracyStandar
ds_final.pdf>.
Citing Sources. 2 June 2008. Duke University Libraries. 1 Sep 2008
<http://library.duke.edu/research/citing/>.
UW-Madison Writing Center. "Create an MLA Works Cited Page." Citing Sources. 2006.
University of Wisconsin at Madison. 1 Sep 2008
<http://www.wisc.edu/writing/Handbook/DocMLAWorksCited_Format.html>.
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