An MLA 'citation number' is assigned to each item (article, book, etc.) indexed by the MLA staff; in the print volumes the records for items can be found in the Classified Section, in 'citation number' order; listings in the Subject Index volume point to items with this 'citation number'.

In this case, 89-1-485 indicates

  1. the year [1989]
  2. the MLA Volume number, in this case I [Volumes I and II are National Literatures, Volume III is Linguistics, Volume IV is General Literature and Related Topics, and Volume V is Folklore --I-V are bound into a single tome]
  3. the citation number within Volume I [in this case 485]