Paper Style Guide

Library Assessment Conference Proceedings are copyedited for clarity and consistency, and are formatted with the Chicago Manual of Style (“full note” endnotes and/or bibliography) as guidance. Below is a short style guide for authors.

Paper presenters are asked to submit a formal, written paper to be included with the proceedings and published online.

  • Papers should be approximately 3,000–5,000 words.
  • Including an abstract is optional.
  • Citations should be in endnote format (not footnotes or parentheticals). See below for example citation formats.
  • Images, charts, tables, and appendices are welcome. See below for examples of how images, charts, and tables are formatted within the text.
  • Submit a plain, unformatted Word document, but please do apply formatting (i.e., bold or italics to section headers).
  • Section headings may use either headline style or sentence case, but should be consistent throughout the paper.

Accessibility

  • Use Word’s built-in style features for bulleted/numbered lists and references.
  • Alternate text is required for all visuals/tables (visit: http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/ for more information).
  • Use meaningful hyperlink text (i.e., ARL home page or the full link: http://www.arl.org).
  • Ensure color is not the only means of conveying information (especially in charts), and use sufficient contrast for text and background colors.
  • Use a simple table structure that specifies column and row headers; do not include blank cells or rows.

Capitalization

Paper titles should use headline-style capitalization:

  1. Capitalize the first and last words in titles and subtitles (but see rule 7 below), and capitalize all other major words (nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and some conjunctions—but see rule 4 below).
  2. Lowercase the articles the, a, and an.
  3. Lowercase prepositions, regardless of length, except when they are used adverbially or adjectivally (up in Look Up, down in Turn Down, on in The On Button, to in Come To, etc.) or when they compose part of a Latin expression used adjectivally or adverbially (De Facto, In Vitro, etc.).
  4. Lowercase the conjunctions and, but, for, or, and nor.
  5. Lowercase to not only as a preposition (rule 3) but also as part of an infinitive (to Run, to Hide, etc.), and lowercase as in any grammatical function.
  6. Lowercase the part of a proper name that would be lowercase in text, such as de or von.
  7. Lowercase the second part of a species name, such as fulvescens in Acipenser fulvescens, even if it is the last word in a title or subtitle.

Library and University

Keep “library/libraries” and “university” lowercase except when using the full name (i.e., Kent State University Libraries or Miller Library).

Similarly, department names are capitalized when the full department name is used (i.e., the English Department, the Department of Economics, etc.) but disciplines (i.e., economics, art history, etc.) are generally lowercase.

Titles and Offices

ARL lowercases academic titles, except as outlined below, or when it is part of a person’s name (i.e., Dean Smith; the dean of libraries).

Civil, military, religious, and professional titles are capitalized when they immediately precede a personal name and are thus used as part of the name. In formal prose and other generic text (as opposed to promotional or ceremonial contexts or a heading), titles are normally lowercase when following a name or used in place of a name.

President Lincoln; the president

General Bradley; the general

John Smith, assessment coordinator

John Smith, director of Access Services Department (**Note: capitalize the full department name, but not the role, when given in a title)

Other Academic Designations

Terms denoting student status are lowercase.

freshman or first-year student; sophomore; junior; senior

Names of degrees, fellowships, and the like are lowercase when referred to generically.

a master’s degree; a doctorate; a fellowship; master of business administration (MBA)

Citations

All citations should be in endnote format and may also include a bibliography.

A note number should generally be placed at the end of a sentence or at the end of a clause. The number normally follows a quotation (whether it is run in to the text or set as an extract). Relative to other punctuation, the number follows any punctuation mark except for the dash, which it precedes.

Book

Endnote:
1. Zadie Smith, Swing Time (New York: Penguin Press, 2016), 315–16.

Shortened endnote:
19. Smith, Swing Time, 320.

Bibliography:
Smith, Zadie. Swing Time. New York: Penguin Press, 2016.

Printed and Online Journals

Endnote:
1. Susan Satterfield, “Livy and the Pax Deum,” Classical Philology 111, no. 2 (April 2016): 170.

2. Shao-Hsun Keng, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem, “Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality,” Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 9–10, https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.

Shortened endnote:
83. Satterfield, “Livy,” 172–73.
84. Keng, Lin, and Orazem, “Expanding College Access,” 23.

Bibliography:
Keng, Shao-Hsun, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem. “Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality.” Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.

Satterfield, Susan. “Livy and the Pax Deum.” Classical Philology 111, no. 2 (April 2016): 165–76.

Website

Websites can often be cited within the text (“As of October 30, 2018, ARL’s home page included…”) and left out of notes and bibliographies. If you would like to formally cite a website, include as much of the following as can be determined: title or description of the page, author of the content (if any), owner or sponsor of the site, and URL.

Also include a publication date or date of revision or modification; if no such date can be determined, include an access date.

Endnote:
14. “WD2000: Visual Basic Macro to Assign Clipboard Text to a String Variable,” revision 1.3, Microsoft Help and Support, last modified November 23, 2006, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/212730.

15. “Privacy Policy,” Privacy & Terms, Google, last modified April 17, 2017, https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

16. “McDonald’s Happy Meal Toy Safety Facts,” McDonald’s Corporation, accessed July 19, 2008, http://www.mcdonalds.com/corp/about/factsheets.html.

17. Barack Obama’s Facebook page, accessed July 19, 2008, http://www.facebook.com/barackobama.

If a site ceases to exist before publication, or if the information cited is modified or deleted, such information should be included in the text or note.

As of July 18, 2008, Hefferman was claiming on her Facebook page that . . . (a claim that had disappeared from her page by September 1, 2008) . . .

4. “Biography,” on Pete Townshend’s official website, accessed December 15, 2001, http://www.petetownshend.co.uk/petet_bio.html (site discontinued).

Bibliography:

Google. “Privacy Policy.” Privacy & Terms. Last modified April 17, 2017. https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/.

Microsoft Corporation. “WD2000: Visual Basic Macro to Assign Clipboard Text to a String Variable.” Revision 1.3. Microsoft Help and Support. Last modified November 23, 2006. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/212730.

How to Cite the Library Assessment Conference Proceedings:

Endnote:
Elliott Felix, “Designing and Assessing Library Services,” in Proceedings of the 2012 Library Assessment Conference: Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment, October 29–31, Charlottesville, Virginia, ed. Steve Hiller, Martha Kyrillidou, Angela Pappalardo, Jim Self, and Amy Yeager (Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 2012), 251, https://www.libraryassessment.org/bm~doc/proceedings-lac-2012.pdf.

Shortened endnote:
Felix, “Designing and Assessing,” 251.

Bibliography:
Felix, Elliott. “Designing and Assessing Library Services.” In Proceedings of the 2012 Library Assessment Conference: Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment, October 29–31, Charlottesville, Virginia, edited by Steve Hiller, Martha Kyrillidou, Angela Pappalardo, Jim Self, and Amy Yeager, 251–259. Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, 2012. https://www.libraryassessment.org/bm~doc/proceedings-lac-2012.pdf.

How to Cite the ACRL Value Report:

Endnote:
Association of College and Research Libraries, Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report, prepared by Megan Oakleaf (Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2010), http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/issues/value/val_report.pdf.

Shortened endnote:
ACRL, Value of Academic Libraries, 28.

Bibliography:
Association of College and Research Libraries. Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report, prepared by Megan Oakleaf. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries, 2010. http://www.ala.org/acrl/sites/ala.org.acrl/files/content/issues/value/val_report.pdf.

Images, Charts, and Tables

Images, charts, and tables are formatted to span the text columns, left-aligned, with the title/figure number above it and the caption (if any) immediately below. Some authors choose to attach images as an appendix, but most include them within the text.

Even More Information

For even more guidance, read the Library Assessment Conference Proceedings: Editing Guidelines, our in-house document for editing procedures.