Did you know you can frequently use and cite online versions of sources–even books–when you’re checking cites?
For example, you can use online versions that are “exact copies” of print sources under R. 18.2. Two places to check for Adobe® PDF versions of scanned books are:
Google Books. Google cannot display every book it has due to copyright issues, but there are millions of books available in full.
Example: The Law of Inheritance According to the Mitacshara, (Rajendro Missry & Opprokash Chunder Mookerjee, eds., H.T. Colebrooke, trans., Thacker Spink & Co. 1869). Google Books has a high-quality scanned version of this 1869 printing.
Hathi Trust. Hathi Trust is a community of research libraries, including the University of California consortium. Hathi Trust has many digital versions of books from Google, plus more titles from its member libraries. (For a quick intro, see this short article from Cornell University News.)
Example: Michael J. Kelly, Lives of Lawyers: Journeys in the Organizations of Practice (1996). Hathi Trust provides a high-quality scanned version of the 2007 printing of this title.
Once you find an online version of a source, you need to cite it in the correct format. Rule 18.2.1 offers general Internet citation principles to determine if you:
- provide no URL at all, as if the print version had been used,
- directly append the URL to the end of the cite, or
- use “available at” with the URL at the end of the cite.