16.5: Notes

1. Lise Buranen presented information that questions this “lore” (as
Stephen North, in The Making of Composition, terms such knowledge claims)
in “But I Wasn’t Cheating: Plagiarism and Cross-Cultural Mythology” (Perspectives
on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in a Postmodern World, ed.
Lise Buranen and Alice M. Roy, Albany: SUNY, 1999, pp. 63–74). In her
study of Eastern versus Western views of what constitutes plagiarism, responses
to questionnaires showed “no basic difference between what they
had been taught in their home country and in this country” (68). However,
in a personal interview, at least one of her colleagues believed that it might
be true that “since the ‘acknowledgment’ of the source is in the very use of it,
listing them [sic] in a bibliography is at best redundant and at worst an insult
to a reader’s intelligence” (69). Nonetheless, the respondent also argued that
“One still credits one’s sources, but what is different is the form in which that
‘credit’ is given, whether explicit or implied” (69). It was noted, however, that
Chinese culture does seem to be moving to a more explicit, e.g., Western,
style of citation (69)

2. I conducted a quick Google search for Dr. Labvin and the Tuguska
Spatial Phenomenon Foundation and was unable to discover any information
about either beyond references to the Sun article. Obviously, in order
to rely on the claims made in this article, a scholar would need to conduct
further research to determine how credible a source he is.

3. I do not mean to imply a cause-and-effect relationship here. There
is no conspiracy. More likely, MLA and the developers of new word processing
technologies were working independently of each other to solve the same
problems and perhaps ended up working at cross purposes.

4. The MLA Handbook argues that “Readers are now more likely to
find resources on the Web by searching for titles and authors’ names than by
typing URLs” (182).

5. As I write this, the American Psychological Association has released
its new 6th edition. Based on, admittedly, a very quick perusal, it appears
that, now that MLA no longer requires inclusion of URLs, APA does, along
with strongly recommending inclusion of the DOI (a more stable identifying
feature than the URL).

6. In this case, I chose to cite the source I actually used, Bartleby.com,
rather than the source Bartleby cites. I also chose to include the direct URL
since it’s short and will take the reader directly to the information I used. I
could also have chosen to cite the URL for Bartleby’s home page, where users
can search for the information, perhaps including the search term(s) or

path(s) in my citation. In other words, there is no one right answer for how
to cite many of the sources that scholars may reference. The key, of course,
is to provide sufficient information for a reasonable and informed reader to
re-locate the same source of information. (NOTE AGAIN—even this may
not always be possible. Sometimes sites move or disappear, and even books
sometimes go out of print. Online there’s the “wayback” machine, Google
sometimes offers cached copies or online sites, and Amazon.com can often
help readers locate even difficult-to-find and out-of-print books.) Are we having
fun yet?

7. Thanks to the editors of this collection, Pavel Zemliansky and Charles
Lowe, as well as to Jim Kalmbach and Douglas Eyman whose thoughtful and
insightful critiques were so helpful in revising and completing this work.