I am searching for a source to match this stellar act of plagiarism. 
I have a student (son of a school board member) who SUMMARIZED the
first fifteen books of the Old Testament.  Below is an excerpt of this
FINE work which does not, obviously match this child's previous
writing:
"Genesis identifies God as the powerful Creator of the cosmos, as well
as the personal Creator of humanity (1-2).  Human rebellion against
God's purposes, and the spiritual and moral devastation it causes,
leads to God's judgement through the flood (3-9)."  I will be glad to
email or fax the rest of this if it helps with the search.  I need the
work cited accurately so as to accquire it and confront the situation.

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Request for Question Clarification by tar_heel_v-ga on 10 Jan 2003 21:09 PST

There are several services available online that will allow you to
enter portions of work and verify it against a database.  Would a
listing of these services (most are subscription based) suffice as an
answer?

-THV

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Clarification of Question by betharina-ga on 11 Jan 2003 19:16 PST

Thank you for your help - all of you.  I will post more pages on
Monday when I return to the classroom (during my prep period).  I am
also doing some sleuthing, as I also felt it must not be available
online.  I am visiting the student's church library and checking out
what would be available to him there.  I have also decided to ask him
to take a quick vocabulary quiz of some of the more advanced words he
"wrote" within his report.  I imagine that should clarify the whole
situation, but I would still like to find his source -it has become a
mission of sorts.  Again - thank you for all of your help.

betharina...

Searches for phrases from the text you quote, such as
"Genesis identifies God as the powerful Creator of the cosmos"
produce no matches. While it is conceivable that, if you cut
and paste a larger portion of the text into a Request for
Clarification, a different phrase will provide a match, 
it is more likely that the text you seek is not available
online, since a match for any phrase would indicate that
the text IS online, yet there are none for the passages
you have quoted thus far.

Another possibility is that, if you post more text, a
researcher will recognize the text, though I believe the
chances are limited. Since researchers are not allowed
personal contact with customers, posting the text in a
Request for Clarification would be the simplest way.
Another option would be to obtain a free website and 
post the text as a file there.

sublime1-ga

Many educators use a service such as

http://www.plagiserve.com (free)
http://www.turnitin.com
http://www.plagiarism.org

to detect plagiarism. The services don't rely only on Internet
searches but use other tools to identify plagiarized works, and they
offer detailed reports.

hlabadie-ga

betharina,

I endorse what sublime1 says, we probably need a longer / larger
extract, either posted as a clarification here or posted on a (free)
web site.

sublime1's strategy was to look for phrases, and no matches were
found.
I tried searching for single words(genesis and creator and cosmos),
adding extra words to the search until I got to a manageable number of
hits - and seaching through each in turn I found no matches.

Which suggests that the source is not on the searchable Internet (at
least, not on the more easily searched part of the searchable World
Wide Web, a 'slight' difference).  It may still be online, it could be
on a cd, it could be from a book or similar non-electronic resource. 
You may still be lucky: many of us have access to good libraries.  But
more text will be very useful.  Perhaps you could scan (and cross
check with the "original") and post a page or two?

Another possibility is that somebody else wrote the piece, for free or
for fee - in which case your chances of proving plagiarism beyond all
doubt are slim.  Again, you might be lucky with Turnitin.com or
similar if the piece has already been submitted previously, but if
it's a totally new piece of custom writing there is no way to prove
the plagiarism.

You could try the Glatt method, basically a cloze test in which you
blank out every fifth word, or every (other?) significant word, and
ask your student to fill in the gaps;  you could ask for an oral
report on the work plus explanation as to what is meant by (for
instance) "spiritual and moral devastation" (who? how" when?"). 
Either might reveal the student as knowing very little about his
writing - but as you are aware, does not definitely prove plagiarism
(other than, possibly, to your own satisfaction).

If it turns out that we cannot help you, then the best advice might be
to keep an eye on the lad, one day he will slip up.  Alternatively,
set him the kind of assignment which does not lend itself to
plagiarism - more easily said than done!

good luck, read2live

As I stated before, the answer is the accurately cited work that the
student used.  Thanks.  If you would like to surf these data bases and
find it, the 20.00 is yours.

It looks to me like a Bible Study guide. Could he simply have copied
from such a guide provided by his Minister, or parent or grandparent ?

Hi betharina,

I know you are looking for the source from which the student allegedly
plagiarized, but in my experience it can be quite difficult to find
that sort of thing (think of all the Bible exegeses there exist!). 
Especially since you could be in a bit of a political fix with this
particular student, I can certainly understand your desire for
complete proof.

One of the professors at my old university used to take a questionable
paper and delete every fourth word, then give it back to the "writer"
and ask him/her to insert the missing words.  Clearly he/she wouldn't
be able to put in the exact word every time, even if the work was
original, but in cases of plagiarism it became clear really quickly
that the student hadn't a clue what should go there.  The prof used
this as "proof" that the student couldn't have written the paper.  I
don't know if that trick will be helpful to you or not, but I thought
I'd mention it.

Good luck!

librariankt