The purpose of this site is to assist researchers who use materials in the Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection in constructing citations for those materials. Standards for citing archival and/or Web-based resources are constantly evolving. These are guidelines only and should not be taken as the "last word." Consult your instructor or publisher to ensure that your work complies with their requirements.
Citations serve two primary purposes. First, they give appropriate credit to the works you have consulted. Secondly, they provide your readers with the information they need in order to locate those works for themselves.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an archive is "A place in which public records or other important historic documents are kept." Archival documents may include books, periodicals, letters, recorded interviews, field recordings, television and radio programs, and other audiovisual items. Some archives may contain copies of widely distributed documents, or original documents that have been copied many times. Sometimes, however, an archive may contain the only known copy of a document. In order for your citation to enable another researcher to locate such a document for themselves, it must not only describe the document but indicate its archival location.
Some audiovisual sources will have all the information you need in obvious places, and citations for such items will be simple. Other sources may lack an author, title, or publication date, or may be untitled and unpublished. Properly citing these types of works may require additional research.
