Integrating Sources into Your Paper

Summaries reflect the main ideas of a source.  A summary takes a large source (such as a book, book chapter, article, etc.) and digests it down into a short discussion of the important parts.  In other words, a good summary just gives the highlights.

Even though you may be just taking one main idea from a source, it is still not your original idea so you must provide a citation.

When you are writing a research paper, you need to include your own original ideas that are supported by other sources. You may wish to summarize a source that you know provides support for your ideas in your paper.  Oftentimes, knowing a main idea of a source is enough to support your idea.  You don't have to provide all the details of a source to make it clear that the main idea supports your conclusions.  Including a citation for the source allows your professor, or whoever else is reading your paper, to consult the original source if they want to know more.