Citing Articles Found or Retrieved with
OCLC FirstSearch

See also: Citing Articles Found or Retrieved with InfoTrac SearchBank | Citing Articles Retrieved with Lexis-Nexis Universe

FirstSearch is a family of databases maintained by OCLC ( Online Computer Library Center, Inc.) and accessible through the CSBSJU libraries and the campus computer network. We access it using a World Wide Web browser, but FirstSearch is not a web document or web site. Neither is it an online journal. It is an online database, and should be cited as such. Through FirstSearch you will find several types of references. 

  1. The first, and easiest to cite, simply points you to a print version of the reference.   Once you have this print version in your hands cite it according to the rules that apply to it as a print source.  FirstSearch was merely your means of locating this source, and you need not cite it any more than you cite the online catalog of the lobrary for a book you find there.  Note that you should not cite information based only on the abstract found with the reference.  You must procure and examine the full source to use it responsibly.
  2. Full text references.  These are harder to cite, for they rarely indicate original page numbers.  If it is possible to get a printed copy of the original, that may be easiest.  However, you can cite from a full-text article, as follows.  Note: These citations follow the guidelines published in Diana Hacker, A Writer's Reference, 4th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.

In-text citation.

Cite by author and original page number, if available.  Do not cite by the pages of your printout, for these are not standard.  Instead, do as suggested for a "Work without page numbers" and count paragraphs.  Cite by paragraph number.  You will often have to use your judgment on where the article proper starts; do not count headings as separate paragraphs.

To cite the below article in your text, count paragraphs from the beginning of the article and use the author's name in the signal phrase:

... According to Nora Franca, women in Guazapa, El Salvador "want to end the situation, but at the same time they think it is their duty to put up with the violence, in the hope that the men will change" (par. 12).

If you do not use the author's name in the signal phrase, cite as follows:  Note the comma between the author and the paragraph #!

Women in Guazapa, El Salvador "want to end the situation, but at the same time they think it is their duty to put up with the violence, in the hope that the men will change" (Franca, par. 12).

Works Cited Reference

Put the following reference in your Works Cited.  (See examples 39 and 30 in Hacker, A Writer's Reference.)

Franca, Nora. "El Salvador: Speaking Up, Speaking Out." The Right to Live Without Violence—Women's Proposals and Actions [Part 9 of 29]. 1996. 39-43. OCLC FirstSearch: CWI. Online. OCLC. March 2000.

*Note that the CWI database here could also be spelled out: Contemporary Women's Issues.