Documentation must become an automatic part of every student's research process. In order to accomplish this, instructors, teachers and librarians develop a scope and sequence that fits their curriculum and creates a culture in which the work of others is acknowledged.
Create a culture of citing
When students get help with homework, the "helper" (parent, tutor, writing center, peer) describes the help at the bottom of the work to be submitted and signs it. For example, a tutor might write "I helped organize the subtopics" and sign at the bottom of an essay. This provides the classroom teacher with a better understanding of the student's level of accomplishment and helps the instructor identify what the class needs to learn or review. Equally important, it creates a bottom-line culture of acknowledging sources and not plagiarizing. In addition to teaching about copyright and fair use, teachers should emphasize that all scholars provide citations so that other scholars can examine prior thinking, assess the authority of the current work, and replicate results.
Citing in the early grades
The youngest students show the class the book in which they found information. As literacy grows, students can copy or dictate the title of a book to be appended to their work or display. Generally, teachers expect young students to recognize author and title. However when students locate conflicting information (e.g., differing statistics about a country), the teacher may want to suggest adding the publication date.
Citing in early elementary grades
When students can read somewhat independently, teachers introduce citation elements as needed for a particular reference. NoodleTools "starter" level projects provide simple examples of how to cite the sources they are most likely to encounter (e.g. book, reference work, magazine, newspaper, Web page, e-mail, interview). This helps teachers show students the elements of citation in a clear, logical way.
Citing in middle school and high school
MLA Advanced covers all cases in the latest MLA Handbook including citing dissertations, conference proceedings, and abstracts of articles. With precollegiate students, teach the range of source lists. Ask students to create annotated bibliographies, works consulted lists, and lists for further reading, rather than repeatedly assigning a single type of list. As students share their lists with you, in addition to correcting their capitalization, give them feedback which emphasizes how to assess the authority, currency and credibility of their sources by examining elements of their citation.
Since they will be using APA format in college, introduce APA as students work on science projects or in the "softer" sciences like psychology or anthropology, disciplines that use APA in college.
Citing in college and graduate school
College and university professors expect their students to be able to create a source list independently. To level the playing field among students (some have learned to document sources in high school and others have not), NoodleTools provides in-context help for almost every field, as well as advice on creating a parenthetical reference (or footnote for Chicago style) for each citation. After you create a source reference, you can click on "Have a Question" to ask the NoodleTools Team about that specific citation. The knowledge base contains up-to-date specific help for difficult and confusing examples.
Citing in the workplace
We know that people in state and local government agencies, companies and nonprofit organizations use NoodleTools. We were interested to learn that Gary Price and Chris Sherman used it to create the bibliography for their book The Invisible Web; Uncovering Information Sources Search Engines Can't See (Medford, NJ: Information Today, 2001) and that bibliographies in California's new Standards and Guidelines for Strong School Libraries (Sacramento, CA: CSLA, 2004) were edited in NoodleTools.
Whenever people share ideas, they need a process of documentation. We hope NoodleTools can take care of the routine part, so that you can focus on the big ideas.