Library FAQ

TurnItIn is an external service that Empire State College subscribes to that has nothing to do with the library. TurnItIn allows students to submit their papers and professors to view and grade those papers. What TurnItIn does is compare the the text of a student's paper with its huge collection of other student papers, web sites, books, articles, etc. It highlights any exact matches as potential plagiarism.

Not everything it highlights is actually plagiarism - it could be just a quotation that you cited properly, and your professor will realize that. And it can only detect plagiarized sentences that it has already "seen" in its collection of materials. Additionally, it can't detect the plagiarism of ideas, where the wording of those ideas is substantially changed. But it is a helpful tool, and students may find that seeing the TurnItIn report inspires them to revise their work with more original thoughts and words. 

The library does not manage or support TurnItIn. For help with your login or technical problems, you need to contact TurnItIn support at 866-816-5046 (then press 2.) 

If your instructor has asked you to submit papers via Turnitin, your instructor must create a login and password for his/her students to use. Ask your instructor for that login and password.

To learn to use TurnItIn, check out their tutorials here: http://www.turnitin.com/static/support.html or take a webinar. Here is the schedule and registration information - http://www.turnitin.com/resources/documentation/turnitin/training/tii_daily_training.pdf