Sources: Preface

THIS WEB SITE, prepared for the instruction and use of Dartmouth undergraduate students, has two purposes. First, it provides a rationale for why, and offers principles for determining when and how, you should cite sources. As such, Sources can be a convenient handbook for you to consult while preparing scholarly work for your classes. Second, it presents a code of scholarly ethics, derived from Dartmouth's Academic Honor Principle, concerning plagiarism. The academic community at Dartmouth and elsewhere considers citational omission to be a dishonest presentation of work, a theft of intellectual property for which someone else deserves credit. The practices of acknowledgment outlined in Sources help to preserve both the integrity and vitality of our scholarly enterprise.
Sources first appeared in 1960. Prepared by a dean and several English professors, it described a world of printed sources, in which the footnote reigned. In 1987, a diverse group of Dartmouth faculty revised the booklet, now privileging the parenthetical format of citation and including a wider palette of sources in its examples. In the mid-1990s, examples for electronic sources entered the booklet. This current edition again revises the material by offering more examples of citation formats and styles and thereby reflecting the range of writing practices across the scholarly disciplines. However, the section on plagiarism — a foundation for our academic life — has remained essentially unchanged in all versions of Sources since 1960.
A printed version of Sources is available through the Dean of the College office.
We thank the many faculty, students, and staff who, over the past four decades, have contributed to keeping Sources current. The 1998 revision has especially benefited from the suggestions of Tibor Nagy, Sarah Mullin, Molly Cronin, Jennifer Collins, Angela Poppe, Adam Groff, Ned Holbrook, Katie Stone, Nancy Fopiano, Elinor Actipis, Andrew Fritts, students in Professor Gene Garthwaite's Winter '98 First-Year Seminar; Karen Gocsik, Dan Nelson and Marcia Kelly; and faculty serving as departmental chairs in Spring '98.

Edward Berger
Dean of the Faculty

Daniel M. Nelson
Acting Dean of the College