Top 10 Reasons to Visit

Your Capital

To Begin

Once you have selected your capital, you will want to begin looking for

information. I suggest starting with

Wikipedia.

A CautionWikipedia is not a reliable source for research:

anyone can change any entry at any time.

Therefore, Wikipedia is not to be used as a source, but as a means of beginning the search for valid sources.

Using WikipediaTrick #1

At the bottom of most entries, you will find a section entitled

“References and external links.”

These are sources outside Wikipedia that have usually been checked out already. Therefore,

these sites can be used as sources.

See an example in the article on Sucre, Bolivia’s second capital

Wikipedia Trick #1Hint

Check links to be sure they still work AND to see if they have information that you need.

Using WikipediaTrick #2

If there are insufficient “References and external links,” try searching for key words

from the article using a search engine, such as Yahoo! or Google.

See an example using the key words “Pujllay festival.”

Wikipedia Trick #1Hint

If you find a source in another language that you think you can use, try copying

the lines you want into an online translator such as Babelfish or

Freetranslation.com to get the basic gist of the article.

Try translating a section from the Municipal Government of Sucre’s website. Be sure you click

the “Free Translation” button on Freetranslation.com and that you choose Spanish to English for both.

Wikipedia Trick #2Hint

Not all sources that come up in your search will be helpful or reliable. First check the

descriptions provided in the search results to determine if the site might have

information you could use.

Sources with excessive ads, with no date of publication or updates, and/or with no one to take credit for the information are

unlikely to contain reliable information. That is, anyone could have made them up.

Wikipedia Trick #2Hint

Personal webpages, including blogs and student research projects, do

not count as valid sources.

Any address containing myspace, blogspot, geocities, angelfire, or xanga, for

example, would therefore not be an acceptable source.

Citing Your Source

CitationMachine.net will do everything for you...

...after you find all of the information you need.

Go ahead and open Citation Machine in a separate window when you have found a source you want to

use.

Citing Your Sources

Once in Citation Machine, select MLA.

Then select what type of source you are using (for this project, most likely a webpage—under non-print).

You will then need to locate your author, page title, site title, publishing date, organization, and URL.

Find Your InformationAt the top, you will find…

Website title Webpage title

Find Your InformationAt the bottom, you will find…

Publication date(go with the most recent)

Organization and/or author(skip author as long as there’s an organization)

Almost Done!

Click “Submit” once you’ve filled in the proper information, and the site

makes your source citation for you!

Just be sure you copy and paste the FIRST citation; it’ll make formatting

easier later.