Class/Lecture Notes Taken By Student
MLA does not have any official rule for citing class or lecture notes taken by a student during a class. Our suggestion is that you track down a source on the topic you would like to reference in your notes. Or, if the item is something that a professor or classmate said that is uniquely their own observation, you should quote them in text without a parenthetical citation at the end of the sentence. Thus you would not include this as a source on your Works Cited page. Just provide as much identifying information in the text itself. For example:
In a lecture on 5 October 2004, in a graduate course on composition theory, Dr. Irwin Weiser stated, "...Class/Lecture Notes Distributed by Professor
MLA also does not have any official rule on class/lecture notes that are provided to a class by the professor, either through handouts or PowerPoint slideshows. Because such notes are documented by a party other than the student, however, we would suggest that you include these in your Works Cited unlike other class notes. Simply consider these documents as you would other unpublished papers or pesentations, but use the designator "Course notes" or "Course handout" to identify the type of document it is.
For notes that are purchased or handed out in class:
Instructor's Name. "Title of Handout/Notes/Slideshow." Course notes. Name of Course. Dept., Institution. Date notes were received.Seas, Kristen. "Conference Guidelines." Course handout. Introductory Composition. Dept. of English, Purdue University. 25 Aug. 2006.For notes available online as PDFs & PowerPoint slides on course site:
Instructor's Name. "Title of Document." Course notes. Date distributed (or created, if known). Course title. Course home page. Dept., Institution. Date accessed from site. <URL>.Meunier, Pascal. "CS 380S Week 4: Format String Vulnerabilities and Integer Overflows." Course notes. 31 Jan. 2007. Secure Programming. Course home page. Dept. of Computer Science, Purdue University. 5 Mar. 2007. <http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/cs390s/refs.html>.The only thing that is really missing in the above examples is the hanging indent, which makes every line of the citation after the first indented. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to adjust that. Otherwise, these examples and explanations coupled with you making a solid decision as to how you want to do address the issue is the way to go.
