To cite a book chapter that your professor uploaded to a website, begin with the MLA format template. List the author of the chapter and the chapter title. List the title of the website as the title of the container, not the title of the book, since you found the chapter on the website rather than in the book. Since your professor uploaded the material, list the professor’s name in the “Other contributors” slot. Then list the publisher of the website (if different from the website’s title), the upload date (if known), and the URL:

Levine, Caroline. “Hierarchy.” Blackboard, uploaded by Mary Smith, 10 Oct. 2017, blackboard.stonybrook.edu/.

To cite a handout, provide the title of the handout or, as shown below, a description of it:

French verb conjugations. Blackboard, uploaded by Valerie Marneffe, 6 Sept. 2017, blackboard.nyu.edu/.

Remember that a course management system such as Blackboard is a container only when it is the platform of publication for the work, as it is here. If your professor provides a link on Blackboard to an external site, then Blackboard is not the container—the external site is.

For more on when a website is a container, see our post, and stay tuned for our webinar on citing complicated web sources.