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Peer Review

Uncle Sam: Brief Guide to Citing Government Publications

Reviewed:

Jan 10, 2009 by Library and Information Services
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Ratings

Overall Rating: 4.0 stars
Content Quality: 4.5 stars
Effectiveness: 4.8 stars
Ease of Use: 4.0 stars
Overview:

This learning object is a short guide on how to cite government publications in Chicago Style.
Type of Material:

How-to guide
Recommended Uses:

This site may assist researchers and writers formatting citations for government documents.
Technical Requirements:

Internet access
Identify Major Learning Goals:

Afer briefly identifying the component parts of a government document citation, examples are provided to illustrate form and style of the Chicago/Turabian reference list format.
Target Student Population:

any user group
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

A rudimentary knowledge of citation forms and styles is needed to effectively use this guide.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:

This site is a brief and useful guide for citing government sources in Chicago style.
Concerns:

A brief explanation distinguishing between a uniform resource locator and persistent uniform resource locator, as well as identifying which of the two is preferable when citing a government document would be a good addition. It's limitation is that it addresses only Chicago style. Noting which version of the Chicago style manual used would assure currency considerations.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:

As a citation manual this guide could be used in conjunction with a research assignment to assist students in formatting a proper citation.
Concerns:

Not applicable

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:

This is a very is easy to use guide. This learning object is essentially a simple online citation manual covering only government documents
Concerns:

This site would benefit by using more examples of how to cite materials. Showing images of materials would also be helpful in demonstrating where citation information may be found (e.g., author). The introductory material at the top may be labeled more clearly to help identify its purpose(e.g., a larger font size). It may be of benefit if there was a way to make font sizes larger. Some heading divisions within the guide are not intuitive and at times confuse between types and formats of government documents.
Other Issues and Comments:

Users would find this information more useful if it was clearly associated with the most recent Chicago manual.
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