September 23, 2016

Hi,

The developers working on the MLA 8 Citation Maker update expect to go live by the end of business on Wednesday, 9/28. It could be earlier in the week, but that’s hard to say. Please note that this only applies to the secondary instance. The elementary version of MLA Citation Maker should be ready by the end of October or earlier.

When we go live with secondary MLA Citation Maker next week, these 7 templates should be available: Book, Periodical Article, Web Site, Audio Recording, Video Recording, Artwork, and Other. All but Artwork are what I consider the “core” templates and should cover 90% of students’ needs. The templates that will be added in a few weeks are Personal Interview, Live Performance or Lecture, E-mail, and Social Media.

The template called Other is meant to be used for any sources not otherwise addressed on Citation Maker. It is based on MLA’s practice template found at the end of Works Cited: A Quick Guide.

If you’ve been reading up on MLA 8, you know that the concept of containers is important. Basically, a student needs to identify the actual source, cite that, and add info about additional containers if necessary. Most often, a container is an anthology, website, or database. For example, for an e-book found online, students would start with the Book template plus fill out the website section at the bottom of that template. For a newspaper article found in a database, students would start with the Periodical Article template plus fill out the database section at the bottom of that template. Erin Fitzpatrick-Bjorn, an Oregon school librarian, found this video from Marquette University Libraries that offers a good overview of MLA 8 and MLA’s concept of containers. It should be helpful for educators and secondary students.

The April 22, 2016 and August 25, 2016 OSLIST posting have more details about Citation Maker being updated to MLA 8.

I’ll be in touch again after we go live or to let you know if there will be a delay.

Thanks,
Jen

Jennifer Maurer
School Library Consultant
Oregon State Library