Humorist Josh Billings quipped, "About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment." Billings was harsh in his view of originality, but his critique reveals a tension faced by students every time they write a history paper. Research is the essence of any history paper. Especially in high school,…

In American colleges and universities, plagiarism is a hot topic: teachers wail and moan about the rise in student plagiarism (though often without evidence to demonstrate this supposed rise); they complain that the Web has "caused" plagiarism; and at the same time, many believe that technology is the key to "solving" the problem of student…