MLA Citation formats for material on eReaders?????

[Jane G]

I am not sure where my question belongs. I am a hs librarian in a Catholic school. A teacher came  to the library; asked  how to cite a source from an eReader: a book, a textbook, magazine, etc. in a bibliography or works cited.  We use 2009 MLA format.

 

I said that is a good question.  I talked with a couple of our English teachers.  Went to  Purdue Owl homepage.  Lots of thoughts and discussion but nothing definitive. Is the material classified as digital?? . We have no eReaders in our school but our students may have access to them at home.

We are in the midst of raising money for a new school and the concept of library will be conpletely changed.

 

I loved reading the articles suggested in the Feb 2011 issue of District Administration by Ed Wetschler.

 

Thanks for your help!!!! 

 

 

 

[Will DeLamater]

Jane, here are some resources I pulled together on this question a while back: Citing Text on a Kindle.

[Debbie Abilock]

Hi Jane,

Coming to this a bit late for you to use it for the current school year.  I'll use Will's examples with a bit of tweaking:

 

In APA  the nice thing is that you could use the full URL if it's not too long, so it would be:

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-ebook/dp/B001ANYDAO

This advice may change as they're at work on an electronic supplement to their 6th edn.

 

As Will correctly says, in MLA you'd cite it as a "digital file." However be sure to work from the title page to include both authors, get the full title and correctly format the publisher's name:

Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Rev. and Expanded ed. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. Kindle file.

 

As an aside, in MLA you'll have to add N. pag. if the pagination changes when the font size changes (vs. pagination that remains the same as the print book):

Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Rev. and Expanded ed. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. N. pag. Kindle file.

 

In Chicago I don't see that the title's currently available as a Kindle in the US but, if it was, follow "14.166 Books downloaded from a library or bookseller" to create this citation: 

Davenport, Thomas H., and John C. Beck. The Attention Economy: Understanding the New Currency of Business. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001. Kindle edition.

 

Best wishes for speedy construction of a lovely new library!