Identifying Elements in the Catalog
When creating a citation for a book, you will need to be able to identify the different components of which it is made. When citing a book, there are a couple of places you can find the information you will need.
- If you have the book in front of you, you can find the information you need on the cover, the title page, and the edition notice page (normally located on the back of the title page)
- The other place you can find the information you will need for a citation is in the Details section of the book's entry in the library catalog
Below you will find a Details section of a book's entry in the library catalog. Each are color coded to designate the elements that are needed to make a citation. Other library catalogs will have similar Details sections that contain the same information, although it may structured in different ways.
Details Section

Identifying the Elements within a Citation
There are times when you have a book's citation that you need to use to find the book. You can use the breakdown of the 3 citation styles located below (MLA, APA, and Chicago Manual Style) to understand the different parts of a citation. Each of the elements are highlighted according to the same key as above.
