About

How to Cite the Library

America's School Trust Library is built to be cited — in court filings, in legislative testimony, in scholarship, and in journalism. We want to be cited. We ask only that the citation be accurate, so a reader who follows it lands on the same page we did and can verify the underlying source for themselves. This page explains how.

General form

The Library is the publisher. The work you are citing — a Reading Room essay, a state catalog page, a Counting House figure page, or one of the book-length works the Library publishes — is what the citation names. Where the page lists a named author, that author goes first. The URL is the locator. A reader needs the date you visited the page, because the Library is a living catalog and pages do get revised.

The general form, modeled on standard digital-library practice:

Author Last, First. "Page Title." America's School Trust Library, accessed YYYY-MM-DD, https://schooltrusts.org/path/.

Two worked examples:

Sullivan, Dave. Stewards of the Republic. America's School Trust Library, accessed 2026-08-12, https://schooltrusts.org/writing/stewards-of-the-republic/.

"Oregon." America's School Trust Library, accessed 2026-08-12, https://schooltrusts.org/reading/us-or/.

The first example is one of the book-length works the Library publishes, so its title is italicized and the Library is named as its publisher. The second has no author line because state catalog pages are institutional work — there is no individual byline on the page, so the citation begins with the page title, and a page inside the Library takes quotation marks around its title with the Library italicized as the containing work.

In specific styles

The form above is close to several common styles already. Here is the same work rendered four ways.

MLA

Sullivan, Dave. Stewards of the Republic. America's School Trust Library, 2026, schooltrusts.org/writing/stewards-of-the-republic/. Accessed 12 Aug. 2026.

Chicago — notes and bibliography

Note: Dave Sullivan, Stewards of the Republic, America's School Trust Library, accessed August 12, 2026, https://schooltrusts.org/writing/stewards-of-the-republic/.

Bibliography: Sullivan, Dave. Stewards of the Republic. America's School Trust Library. Accessed August 12, 2026. https://schooltrusts.org/writing/stewards-of-the-republic/.

Chicago — author-date

Sullivan, Dave. 2026. Stewards of the Republic. America's School Trust Library. Accessed August 12, 2026. https://schooltrusts.org/writing/stewards-of-the-republic/.

Bluebook (for legal writing)

Dave Sullivan, Stewards of the Republic, AMERICA'S SCHOOL TRUST LIBRARY (Aug. 12, 2026), https://schooltrusts.org/writing/stewards-of-the-republic/.

For a state catalog page in a brief: Oregon, AMERICA'S SCHOOL TRUST LIBRARY (Aug. 12, 2026), https://schooltrusts.org/reading/us-or/.

Citing primary sources reached through the Library

When the Library hosts or links a statute, a court filing, or a historical document, cite the primary source directly — the statute citation, the reporter citation, the archival call number — and name the Library as the access point.

So a statute reached through the Library is cited to its code, then noted as reached through the Library:

Or. Admis. Act of 1859, 11 Stat. 383, § 4 (reached through America's School Trust Library at https://schooltrusts.org/reading/library/oregon-admission-act-1859/).

A court filing hosted on the Library:

Letter Op. Granting Summ. J., Siuslaw Sch. Dist. 97J v. State, No. 24CV38372 (Or. Cir. Ct. Coos Cnty. July 24, 2026) (available via America's School Trust Library at https://schooltrusts.org/court/filings/2026-07-24-combs-summary-judgment-letter-24cv38372.pdf).

The reader who needs to verify the statute looks it up in the published code; the reader who needs the court filing finds it where we hosted it. Both readers know exactly where to look.

Citing figures from the Counting House

Every figure in the Counting House carries a confidence badge, an as-of date or fiscal year, and the date the record was last reviewed. What it does not yet carry is a published source line for each figure: those fields are empty in the substrate today. Until they are filled, cite the underlying source — the statute, audit, or agency report the number came from — where you have it, and treat the Counting House page as the access point. Where you do not have it, cite the Counting House page and say what it told you.

America's School Trust Library, Counting House, Oregon, https://schooltrusts.org/counting/us-or/ (permanent fund corpus $2 billion as of June 30, 2025; record last reviewed April 29, 2026).

The principle: a number's authority comes from the source the number is drawn from, not from the page that displays it. Where the Library cannot yet name that source, the citation should say so rather than borrow authority the page does not have.

Permission and reuse

Catalog text and Reading Room essays written by the Library are available for quotation under standard fair-use principles for scholarship, journalism, court filings, and legislative work. Quote what you need; cite what you quote. Quoting a Reading Room essay at length, or republishing a page in whole or substantial part, requires written permission. Contact details are on the About page.

Material the Library hosts but did not write — statutes, court filings, archival documents, third-party photographs — is governed by the rights that attach to the original source. For takedown procedure and the full rights notice, see Rights, Use, and Takedown.

If a citation looks wrong

Accuracy is the only thing we ask of the citing reader, and accuracy is also what we ask of ourselves. If you follow a citation and the page no longer says what we said it said, or if a figure has changed since you cited it, use the Submit-Correction control at the foot of the page in question. We will look at it, fix it if it needs fixing, and note the change. Citations that point to a moving target serve no one; we work hard to keep the targets steady. For the full correction protocol, see Corrections.