November 2010

The Internet has brought an age of convenience for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. It gives you the ability to market and research that is unparalleled in history. With that opportunity comes some danger and today, one of the safest forms of communicating with attorney-clients has been turned against us. Documents created in the super-hand portable document format (PDF) used to be the safest form of sharing documents. Everyone could open them, read them safely and we’d all see the document exactly as its creator intended. Life with PDFs was good.

That was until someone broke the code and learned how to create a malware package that can be delivered and installed on your computer simply by opening a “poisoned” PDF document. These miscreants took advantage of loopholes in Adobe’s^® Acrobat^® and Adobe Reader software. To avoid these flaws tech-savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultants turned to alternate PDF readers (like Foxit™) and so the miscreants turned their attention to those readers also.

But do not be afraid my CLNC^® amigos. Luckily on the side of the angels (that’s most of us), there are the fine people who write antivirus programs, antispyware programs and who create fixes for our web browsers and other software to keep us safe. I know that nobody likes patches, whether they’re full of pumpkins, on your favorite denim jacket or even for your operating system (OS). We do need, though, to apply those patches and keep our software up-to-date.

To keep your Adobe software from running malware embedded in a PDF document, open Adobe Reader, go to Edit, then Preferences, then scroll down to Trust Manager and uncheck the box next to “Allow opening of non-PDF file attachments with external applications.” This will provide a basic layer of protection. Even better, if you’re using any version of the free Adobe Reader less than 9 then you should upgrade to Adobe Reader 9.4.0 or higher. If you’re not using the free Reader, IT’S TIME TO UPGRADE. If you’re using a full version of Adobe Acrobat 9 you should upgrade to 9.4.0 or higher. Here is a link to the free Reader. Remember to uninstall your earlier version before installing the new version.

I’ve also blogged before about the dangers of relying on the so-called “automatic updates” features of some software. Sometimes they don’t work and you end up running unpatched or vulnerable software – this includes your web browsers, all your Microsoft programs (including your OS) and especially Adobe products. Nobody knows when the next weakness will be discovered and exploited so keep your patches up to date.

One last tech tip, get a free copy of SUPERAntiSpyware for every computer in your home and legal nurse consulting business and run it once a week (keep it updated too). It’s not guaranteed to catch all malware but it’s a terrific program. I actually run it every other week, alternating it with running a free copy of Spybot^® Search & Destroy. It’s another terrific free resource and between the two, I feel pretty safe knowing one of them has my back, just like I’ve got yours.

Keep on techin’ – bringing safety back,
Tom

I was on a hiking trip with a guide, Colin. The trail varied between rock and brush. Colin’s dog, Uzuri, came with us, sometimes running ahead of us, sometimes following behind, but almost never on the trail. Well into the hike we encountered a section of trail infested with burrs. Soon Uzuri came up next to me. She was limping along on three legs, obviously having picked up a burr.

The nurse in me immediately kicked in. I called the dog over and looked at her troubled paw. When Colin came up behind me, I asked him the best way to remove the burrs. He replied, “Oh, I don’t do that. I let her sort it out. Otherwise, I’ll spend all my time out here picking burrs off her.” I put her paw down and, sure enough, moments later she was running along next to us again on all fours, the burr gone and forgotten.

As we hiked, I thought about Colin’s words and actions. He lives a lifestyle where self-reliance is a necessity, not a luxury. In a land as brutal and harsh as the wilderness, people and animals must be strong and learn to depend on themselves. Without independence, no living thing lasts long in the wilderness.

Principles That Work in the Wild Also Work For Your CLNC^® Business

This principle also applies in our world of business and legal nurse consulting. Sometimes when faced with a business challenge, we must figure it out on our own. If we come up with our own solutions, we grow stronger. Excessive reliance on others for our success merely weakens us. Soon even the simplest task becomes difficult. Challenges we once conquered with relish and ease become nearly impossible.

Nietzsche said, “That which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” His words, while a bit overly dramatic, ring true for all entrepreneurs. You don’t usually die in business. You may suffer some injuries – to your pride, your reputation, your pocketbook or your dreams. But if you don’t learn to be independent, your dreams may die, and they’ll certainly always be in someone else’s hands, not your own.

My sympathy for Uzuri caused me to almost intervene to her detriment. If I had helped her, I would have had a friend for life. Instead, Colin encouraged me to let her be independent. The next time she picks up a burr, she’ll handle it like a pro. She won’t limp back to the main house looking for Colin or me.

CLNC^® Mentors Help You Become Your Own Burr-Removing Expert

The Institute’s CLNC^® Mentors play a similar role for you. They will guide you and teach you to remove your own burrs. But the CLNC^® Mentors won’t protect you from every burr. They know that removing burrs for you keeps you from experimenting and learning the vital skill of independence. They appreciate the wisdom of the old saying: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day – teach him to fish, and you feed him forever.

This doesn’t mean you should never ask for help in removing a burr. Some burrs are too big or too thorny to pull out by yourself. The successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultant knows when to ask for help and when to “just do it!” They also know that the taste of victory is never so sweet as when it comes from your own efforts.

Use your mentoring wisely. It’s intended to be a teaching tool – not a crutch. My job is to help you achieve CLNC^® success. Your job is to be successful. To live your own dreams, start removing your own burrs today.

May you never have a dream you can’t attain or a burr too big to pick out. Got to go! I’ve got a big burr to remove!

Success Is Inside!

I spend a lot of time in airports. Sometimes it seems that the actual flying is the shortest part of the trip. The greater amount of time is spent getting to the airport, passing through the body-cavity checks and double-TSA pat-downs (I’m a sucker for the pat-downs). Then there’s looking for the closest Starbucks^®, food (preferably Popeye’s Chicken) and then restrooms (in that order). Eventually I find myself sitting in the airline’s lounge chowing down on free drinks and peanuts or sitting on the floor outside the gate with the rest of the steerage passengers. I boot up my laptop and log onto the closest free Wi-Fi signal I can find. Here’s a savvy geek-traveler trip – look for the largest airline club. They often have free Wi-Fi for their members and you can soak up some of the over-flow/leakage just by sitting outside their lounge with your wireless card switched on and sponging off their service.

That’s what I found myself doing recently, and while sitting there I started chatting with the fellow traveler next to me about the security of free Wi-Fi connections. Like many other travelers and probably many Certified Legal Nurse Consultants, my new BGB (best geekster buddy) didn’t know that the wireless connections offered in most airports, hotel lobbies, coffee shops and fast food restaurants are unencrypted and thus are not secure. Even if those connections require a log-on password (like many hotels that offer free wireless), once someone has that password, they’ve got unencumbered access to that same network and theoretically to your data traffic. The pay-for-play connections which require a credit card number to access the network often only encrypt the payment segment of the connection, so the balance of your surf-time won’t be encrypted or safe.

What this means to Certified Legal Nurse Consultants is that any Internet miscreant with a little bit of tech talent can actually see what legal nurse consulting-related subjects you’re surfing, read your legal nurse consulting business’s email or even steal the passwords to any accounts you log into while on the service. Horrified? You should be. Does it happen often? Nobody can tell for sure, but like I teach about defensive contracting tactics in my class on How to Formulate and Negotiate Contracts in the CLNC^® Certification Program, if it happens to you once, it’s one time too many.

So what can you do? Here are four simple solutions. First, don’t use free or unsecured wireless connections; instead, you can purchase a wireless card from AT&T, Verizon or Clear. You could also stay in a hard-wired world but that kind of defeats the purpose of mobile computing on a laptop. Second, if you’re a CLNC^® consultant who works with a corporation, insurance company or law firm with access to a virtual private network (VPN), you can just connect to that VPN and use its secure tunnel for your Internet necessities. That way all traffic back and forth between your computer and the firm’s server is encrypted. But there are two problems with that: first, surfing the Internet is against our company policies and probably that of just about every other company, so I guess that’s out. I can use our VPN to check my Vickie Milazzo Institute email, post blogs, access our network, etc. but it’s strictly for business use and has software which limits where you can go on the web (which can put a cramp in my holiday shopping and surfing). The second problem is that while some VPNs encrypt all traffic, other VPNs do not, which means some of your traffic will still be exposed. Your firm’s geeks will be able to tell you which type of VPN they employ — and what policies control how you use it.

Third, my CLNC^® amigos, you can utilize a private VPN service such as Hotspot Shield from AnchorFree which is a free service. And it will protect your surfing to a limited extent. You simply download and install their free software which creates a VPN between your laptop and AnchorFree’s servers. I’ve tried their service and it works pretty well. The slowdown is minimal (or my connection was slow to begin with) but the added security is worthwhile. They’ll serve you some ads in the tab you have open when you connect to their server, but I found you can open other tabs for your browsing and they’ll stay ad free!

Finally, the fourth and easiest if not simplest solution is to just watch what you do while you’re on those unsecured networks. If you absolutely must have email, get yourself a Gmail^® account which stays logged into an encrypted connection until you log out. Otherwise don’t do any online banking, do any shopping, use your PayPal^® account or even (the horror, the horror) check your Facebook^® page. I know I’ve just taken away all the things you like to do for fun on the web – but wouldn’t you rather be a safe Certified Legal Nurse Consultant than a fun one?

Oh, and there’s something I forgot to tell you. If you’re utilizing that same free wireless service on your iPhone^® or Android^® phone to save money on your data transfer plan, guess what? That’s right — you can suffer the same issues. More and more people are using mobile banking applications on their phones and doing so in public places. That’s why I recommend switching off the Wi-Fi service on your phone and staying with your provider’s data service. You could, of course, use a VPN on your phone too (Hotspot Shield apparently works on iPhones, woo-hoo!). Check with your phone provider or buy a Dummies^® book about your phone to learn how to set up a VPN on your smart phone.

Keep on techin’ – even more safely than usual,

Tom

Tom jokes with me that I have two speeds – fast and off. It’s true that I work fast and that I have an innate way of grasping a concept and moving forward with it. I can also switch back and forth between complex issues with a speed and mindfulness that baffles my staff (even Tom gets temporarily derailed by sudden changes in direction). At the end of the day though, that speed catches up with me and I switch to off, usually right after a glass of healthy red wine. During the day, I move like quicksilver and expect the same from my staff – the legal nurse consulting world moves rapidly and we need to stay ahead of it.

I never cared for those self-help books that claim you must act slowly to be mindful. After all, most of us can’t and don’t live a Buddhist monk’s life in this fast-paced world. During a trip to an ancient Buddhist Monastery in Kyoto, Japan it was the monks themselves who shattered the “mindfulness” myth perpetuated by many self-help authors. Buddhist monks are the epitome of mindfulness and on this trip I observed them mindfully walking the grounds, ringing the prayer bell, meditating, sweeping or gardening, all in the slow and deliberate manner we associate with mindfulness.

But to get to that mindful state, they must first wake and eat. That’s where the myth was shattered and where speed came in. Well before dawn when the waking bell rings, the otherwise peaceful monks become a beehive of frenzied activity. They rapidly roll off their pallets, “thump,” fold and store their bedding and stream down the hall to the meal room, rice bowls in hand. There they pass wordlessly through the line, receive their food and shovel it into their mouths with a speed and intensity that makes a nursing lunch look leisurely. The monks accomplish all of these tasks quickly, but at the same time, in a fully-present and mindful state – despite the speed.

That day I learned that doing something quickly doesn’t mean that you have to abandon mindfulness when you do so. You can be fully present in every state and at every speed – so long as you have the intention to do or be so. In your legal nurse consulting business you’ll need to be fully present in all your tasks and you’ll expect the same from your CLNC^® subcontractors. This doesn’t mean that you’ll be expected to work slowly – you can be fast and mindful. To be a successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultant you must practice mindfulness at whatever speed you’re working and sometimes your attorney-clients will need you to work at the speed of light. Start practicing speedy mindfulness today.

Success Is Inside!

When you walk into an attorney-prospect’s office you will want the attorney to view you as a professional who produces quality and professional work. To accomplish this goal, it pays to be prepared. One Certified Legal Nurse Consultant shared with me how she learned this lesson the hard way.

“The biggest mistake I ever made was with my first attorney interview. When I first sat down, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had forgotten how to start the interview and how to sell my service as a CLNC^® consultant. The situation only got worse as the interview continued.

On my way out of his office empty-handed, I recalled the story about the minister who decided he would not prepare for his lesson, but would let God speak through him. Sunday morning came and when the minister got up to speak, God did speak to him. God said, “You are not prepared.” That was exactly how I felt, very unprepared. I thought I could waltz into the attorney’s office without practicing beforehand, and everything would go smoothly. But that’s not the way it works.

Before my next attorney interview, I re-listened to Vickie’s CLNC^® Certification Program and practiced interview questions, opening lines and closing comments. When I arrived for that interview, I was very prepared and I walked away with a case. Whatever the assignment, I have learned to always be prepared.”

Learn from one CLNC^® consultant’s mistake to ensure you walk out of your next attorney interview with a case.

Success Is Inside!

P.S. Comment and share what you will do to prepare for your attorney-client interviews.

For a busy CLNC^® consultant staying up with pertinent information on the web can be pretty time consuming. There’s an awful lot of information that changes on a daily, hourly, even as-you-read-this basis. One way for you to stay on top of the news or the latest changes in a subject of interest for your legal nurse consulting business is to use RSS feeds on a customized Google^® or Yahoo!^® homepage.

Another way is to set up “Google Alerts.” These harness the unmatchable power of Google^® to search the web, at whatever time-basis you choose, for subjects of your choice. You simply need to go to Google.com/alerts where you’ll see this page:

In the search terms box, use words or a phrase directly related to your legal nurse consulting business (don’t be too specific) and set the other conditions, such as how often you want Google to check for your terms and your email address (so that it knows where to send it). Click on Create Alert and it will send you a verification email. Once you click on the link in the verification email, you’ll start getting alerts. You can set up as many alerts as you want on as many topics as you want – you’re only limited by your curiosity and the amount of email you want to receive.

This is a terrific way for busy Certified Legal Nurse Consultants to keep up with the most current news and events without having to spend their precious non-billable hours surfing the web to do so.

Keep on techin’,
Tom

Of all the places I’ve been in the world, Africa is one of my favorites. It really got under my skin and that’s why I know I’ll go back. Periodically, Tom and I revisit Africa through the photos we took there. The last time we did this reminded me of an article I wrote about the migration. I’d like to share it with you to inspire you in your own adventures as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant.

While on vacation in the Serengeti Plains of Africa, I sat on a riverbank for three hours watching a herd of wildebeest (or gnu) build up the courage to drink from the water. This herd was part of the Great Migration that happens like clockwork every summer. More than 1,000,000 wildebeest move northward from the arid Serengeti into the wetlands of the Masai Mara.

The migration is a long, dry and arduous journey. Frequently the only available water is the Grumeti River. Crisscrossing the wildebeest migration route through the Serengeti, the Grumeti represents both life and death to the herds. Unlike some creatures that can take their moisture from the grass they eat, the wildebeest must drink from the river to live. Although they can survive up to five days without water, they try to drink twice a day.

The Life-or-Death Challenge of the Great Migration

Hot from the sun, thirsty from the effort and dry from the dust, the animals arrive at the river. They must drink to survive. Yet the river supports other life, such as scrub brush, trees and fresh, sweet grass along its banks. Some of that life, such as the brush, provides cover for predators that present a danger to the wildebeest.

Lions wait until the herd is stretched thin then charge, trapping a gnu with its back to the river. The other wildebeest stampede, raising a dust cloud that obscures the view of those closest to the lions. A kill is almost guaranteed.

Where the water is still enough to form drinking pools, large crocodiles lurk just beneath the surface or sun themselves on the approaches. One day I watched 28 crocodiles feast on an unlucky gnu. Another day a gnu escaped the crocodiles with only lacerations and a broken leg – probably to fall victim to lions later that evening.

Sometimes the rushing water itself presents the danger. The massive weight of the herd may push the leading animals into the current, where they drown or get swept into the jaws of a crocodile.

To Drink or Not to Drink – The Dance of the River Crossing

The wildebeest seem to be aware of these horrific possibilities as they approach a low spot, ideal for crossing or drinking. Animals at the leading edge of the herd inch up to the bank. Individual gnus step forward tentatively, sniff the air, make their distinctive, plaintive “gnu” sound and step back. This dance continues for hours. The herd, smelling water, bunches up behind these “leaders,” gradually nudging them toward the water whether they want to go or not. If it’s been a long time since the herd last drank, you feel their desperation. Yet the dance goes on.

On the day I watched for three hours, a young gnu finally stepped ahead of the herd and started drinking. Was it innocence and ignorance of the danger that moved this young gnu into the water or was it simply thirst?

The fearful adults held back until the herd pushed them forward and a number of them began drinking. Moments later the surging masses shoved one gnu further into the water than it was willing to go. It panicked and in turn panicked the others. They all retreated quickly from the water and returned to the migration. Only those that had been brave enough to be at the leading edge of the herd in the first place got a drink. The others, more fearful or perhaps simply mired in the pack, went thirsty.

What kept the rest of the gnus from drinking? Did they know too much? Were they too afraid? Or were they simply too comfortable in the relative safety of the middle of the herd? Whatever the answer, only a few animals got to drink at that crossing.

In ritualistic fashion twice each day the wildebeest line up at the nearest river crossing to start the process all over again. Another afternoon I watched a smaller herd stand on a cliff 30 feet above the river. The vertical drop kept them from reaching their goal. But just 100 yards upstream lay a shallow crossing they could have easily reached. Instead of moving toward their goal, they stood on the cliff, moaning and bleating over the water they couldn’t reach.

Lessons from the Wildebeest – Take a Risk to Satisfy Your Thirst

Are you kin to the wildebeest? What keeps you bound to the herd and thirsty for the water of success? Is it fear of the unknown or what might be in the bushes? Or are you lulled by meaningless daily rituals that take you no further toward your CLNC^® career goals?

Successful Certified Legal Nurse Consultants are risk-takers. They are the ones who get to the CLNC^® river, drink and admittedly sometimes get eaten. All of life is a risk. When you drive onto the freeway, step into your facility, enter a grocery store or eat in the hospital cafeteria, you face a risk that you won’t return home. In the words of T.S. Eliot, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find how far one can go.”

Lots of RNs want to get their lives back and do something different. Instead, they stand just out of reach of the water of success, watching others drink while they go thirsty.

Don’t let your fears hold you back. Don’t wait for the momentum of others to push you forward. You must act. The consequences of your action or inaction are in your hands. Only you have the power to start your new life. One of my favorite quotes is from Katherine Mansfield: “Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself.” Take a risk – take a drink today and you’ll never be thirsty another day in your life.

See you at the river. I’ll be up front!

Success Is Inside!

The weather has finally turned to fall here in Houston. This means that for a too-short period of time, those summer days of 104+ degrees are gone. Our recent mornings have been in the low 60’s, what we currently consider “crisp.” Morning is my favorite time and Tom and I are out well before the sun comes up for a walk around our “hood.” Yesterday morning was a little extra crisp so I went to get a light jacket and also noticed my hiking gear, my arctic gear, my rain gear and even my diving gear.

When Tom and I walked out of the house, we were laughing about the fact that we have all the right gear for just about everything and that we are committed to putting it to more use this winter. There aren’t many mountains to climb here in Houston and I can’t remember the last time I needed a parka that’s best suited for the Antarctic winter. The boat pants and high boots I use for climbing in and out of zodiacs have come in handy with some of our rain storms – but the rest of the gear sits and waits for the proper vacation.

You have gear (tools) in your legal nurse consulting business too. Putting all the gear you have to use is just as important to your legal nurse consulting business as is using all the clothing and gear in your life. Vickie Milazzo Institute gives you the CLNC^® gear you need to create a successful business as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant. Many of you buy computers, set up home offices and with the help of the CLNC^® LaunchBox, turn out perfect promotional materials. But then, in the words of one CLNC^® consultant, you get “professional bradycardia” and you don’t put that gear to use.

I’ve joked in the past about a souvenir t-shirt from one of our diving trips that says, “You can run out of air and die. You can get bitten by a shark and die or you can fall off the couch and die. Get off the couch!” You won’t fail, but more importantly, you can’t succeed until you take your tools and get to work.

Between your nursing knowledge and experience and the CLNC^® Certification Training Program from the Institute, you’ve got the all the right gear you need to succeed. Make a plan and get started on the path to CLNC^® success today, even if that means getting off the couch first or pulling the gear you need out of your legal nurse consulting closet.

I look forward to seeing you at the top and hearing your CLNC^® Success Story.

Success Is Inside (once you get started)!

I was working out the other day and, in order to drive the pain as far from my consciousness as possible, my trainer and I were discussing some issues he was having with his Apple^® laptop. Now, I don’t know much about Macs^® and I didn’t sleep in a Holiday Inn Express the night before but I was more than willing to give him some free tech advice (and forestall any more sets of lunges).

His issues were simple – he wondered if, when he was moving from gym to gym, he should put his laptop into sleep mode or to let it hibernate. Now, more than one Certified Legal Nurse Consultant has already asked me that very same question so my answer was a definitive “It depends.”

Sleep (Stand-by or Suspend) mode is what happens to most laptops when you shut the lid while they’re still running. They’re supposed to go into a lower-power state cutting off power to peripherals and some portions of the machine (screens, Wi-Fi^® adaptors, mice, etc.). When you open the screen back up, the machine is supposed to power itself back up so you can immediately start working on that report for your favorite attorney that you left open. That’s the theory anyway.

I’ve snapped my laptop’s cover shut, dropped the laptop into my carry bag and later, when I pulled it out, just about dropped it on the floor because it was darn near overheated! Sometimes the hard drive won’t get the sleep command and it will chug away until either the battery runs down or the computer melts down. Sleep mode has never been entirely debugged, at least to my satisfaction. I’ve seen computers in sleep mode “wake up” and, like a New Orleans Saints fan after a big win, not (immediately) recognize its surroundings (printers, mice, Wi-Fi adaptor, scanner, etc.) requiring a reboot, sometimes with a potential loss of data (if you don’t know the keyboard shortcuts to save [Ctrl+s] your documents). The savvy CLNC^® consultant would do well to avoid sleep (computer-wise).

Hibernate is a more evolved form of sleep (just ask a bear). Theoretically when a computer is told to hibernate it stores a copy of everything you have open including knowledge and status of attached peripherals (really everything in the RAM) to a file on the hard drive. It then shuts down. When you start it back up, it pulls the information from that file, restoring itself to the state it was in when it was sent to hibernate. Green legal nurse consultants love hibernation as a power-saving option. You can also set your laptop to do this automatically when it reaches a pre-determined battery-low level to help stave off data loss.

What does this mean to you and your legal nurse consulting business? I’d rather see you hibernate than sleep (computer-wise). Whichever mode you choose, make sure the machine keeps power throughout, as a loss of power could mean a loss of data. Today’s Macs and the newest versions of Windows^® use a combination of sleep and hibernate to protect data when the machines are “put down for the night” and which are, in theory, more stable. You’ll have to test for yourself how well that works. My advice – make sure it’s really “out” before you drop it into your bag or walk away from it at night.

Keep on techin’,

Tom

Citing references and formatting bibliographies are an important aspect of preparing your legal nurse consulting reports. This increases the credibility of the opinions you render to your attorney-clients. Here are seven tips to use when preparing your legal nurse consultant reports.

1. Follow the standard format for presenting references.
   • Textbook
     Schul, Patricia Dwyer. 2010 Nursing Spectrum Drug Handbook, Fifth Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009

   • Journal article
     Jahromi, Afshin, Clase, Catherine M., et al. “Progression of Internal Carotid Artery Stenosis in Patientes with Peripheral Arterial Occulusive Disease.” Journal of Vascular Surgery^®. 50(2): Aug 2009, 292-298.
2. Provide a complete reference – including the author’s name, title of the article and journal or title of the book and complete publication information (volume number, page and year for a journal; city, publisher and year for a book). Be sure the publication information is accurate. Make sure your references are complete and accurate.
3. Put book titles and the names of journals in italics. Put article titles in quotation marks and not in italic type. You may be used to seeing the article and even the book titles with only the first words capitalized, but the standard format is to capitalize the first word and all major words in the title of an article or book. Do not capitalize “a,” “the,” “and” and short prepositions (unless they’re the first word in a title). Follow these formatting techniques and your reference list will be easier to read.
4. List your references in alphabetical order by author’s last name. In a reference with multiple authors, alphabetize by the last name of the first author listed. In a reference with no author listed, double check to be sure there’s no author on the work, then alphabetize by the name of the publishing organization.
5. When listing website references, if no author is listed, alphabetize by the name of the organization or title of the site (not by the URL).
6. Be sure website listings are current and correct. If you haven’t used a site in a while, recheck the link to make sure it still works and still takes you to the same information you used in formulating your report.
7. Group references by type of source – for example, textbooks, journal articles, websites.

Success Is Inside!