Home [ Web Page | Article | Book | Selection ]

Choose a form, fill it out, and push the button... you will get an individual entry for a "Works Cited" page, which you may then copy and paste into your word processor. The BibBuilder is more like a guide than a full-fledged utility, but you may nevertheless find it helpful.

What kind of source are you using?

1. Web Page: personal home page, online journal article, or other Internet resource. (Note: most web pages are not credible. Use a peer-reviewed academic journal article instead.)
2. Article: an article from a journal, magazine, newspaper, etc.
3. Book: an entire work (novel, play, long poem, biography, etc.), published separately.
4. Selection: a work published in a collection.

About the Bibliography Builder

This web document does not attempt to duplicate all the resources available in the MLA Handbook, which is the most authoritative source, and which is available in any bookstore or at any reference desk. This program allows the user to subdivide the task of constructing a bibliography entry, focusing on just one item at a time. The intention is to reduce the need to scavenge through the handbook's 81-page chapter on citation in the hopes of finding a precise model illustrating how to cite a particular source. 

Limitations

• Garbage in, garbage out. If you don't type the correct information in the blanks, or if you use improper formatting, this utility won't be able to correct it for you.
• This utility requires a browser with JavaScript and frames capability (found in any recent graphical browser). 
• When you copy text from the browser window, you may lose the formatting (such as underlining).
• This utility generates one entry at a time.  Alphabetizing and formatting the entries on the page is up to you (but this article will help: MLA Style--Using MS-Word to Format a Paper). There are commercial database applications that will do the fancy stuff; this tool is primarily intended to help undergraduates (although I use it myself all the time).

Work Cited

Gibaldi, Joseph. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 4th ed. New York: MLA, 1995.