Question on Essay: Can I use this as a source?

Buddy Lee

Hey all,

I'm writing a final paper on Chernobyl, and a lot of the books that I am using have a lot of useful data cited from different sources.

My question is this: When I refer to this data, can I refer to the original source that has been cited? The thing that I find questionable about it is the fact that I don't have a copy of the source, I'm just re-citing it.

Thanks!

Kate of Lokys

You really should only reference sources you actually consulted. So, if you have a book that lists the results of different studies/findings by the World Health Organization, Greenpeace, and the Soviet government, you could refer to all three of those groups in your paper, but in each case, the citation would mention the actual source, and only that source would be listed in your bibliography.

Assuming you're using APA format, it would look like this:

According to the World Health Organization, the Chernobyl accident was directly responsible for over 8000 deaths (as cited in Orlov, 2006, p. 75). Greenpeace, however, estimates the figure to be much higher, claiming that up to 40,000 individuals will eventually die as a result of Chernobyl (ibid., p. 90). Finally, the official Soviet government statement insists that the worst nuclear disaster in history caused a mere 31 fatalities (ibid., p. 102).

Then in your bibliography, the only entry would be:

Orlov, I. (2006). Chernobyl: Twenty years later. New York: Dover.