May 1997
Newsletter #28
 

Transforming Libraries While Preserving the Past 

Library of Congress Joins CIRLA

Electronic Journals: A New Piece in the Digital Puzzle

In Our Cites: Electronic Resources

Reserve Deadlines

Reserve Materials Form Available Electronically

Special Collections Catalog Available

Honor with Books

Finding Books on the Web: Book and Publishing Websites

New Hoya's Guide

Fairchild Gallery Opens

In recent years the proliferation of electronic sources of information has fundamentally changed the way we conduct research. Not surprisingly, it has also changed the way we cite sources in our bibliographies. Because of the nature of the media themselves, World Wide Web Sites, online databases, and CD-ROM products in some ways resist the bibliographic formats designed for printed materials. A World Wide Web site, for instance, has no "publisher" in the sense that a book does, while it does have an "address," a feature as unknown to the world of hardcopy as it is essential to any cyber-citation.

One of the first books to address this new concern was Xia Li's 1993 publication, Electronic Style: A Guide to Citing Electronic Information (LAU Ref Desk PN171 .D37 L5 1993) . Since then, several of the standard style manuals have faced the brave new world of electronic resources, providing guidelines for citing information in these new formats:

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (4th ed., 1994) LAU Ref Desk LB2369 .G53 1995

Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (6th ed., 1996) LAU Ref Desk LB2369 .T8 1996

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (4th ed., 1994) LAU Ref Desk BF76.7 .P83 1994

Frankly, though, the guidelines offered by the traditional style manuals tend to be less than useful regarding electronic citations, especially references to Internet sources. So, as is perhaps more appropriate, several World Wide Web sites have themselves entered into the debate, generally providing more detailed suggestions: 

NOTE: The following citations follow the style set out in Janice Walker's MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources (see below).

Greenhill, Anita. "Electronic References & Scholarly Citations of Internet Resources." 1 Jan.1997 .http://www.gu.edu.au/gint/WWWVL/OnlineRefs.html (19 May 1997).

Harnack, Andrew and Gene Kleppinger. "Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Electronic Sources on the Internet." 25 Nov. 1996. http://falcon.eku.edu/honors/beyond- mla/ (19 May 1997).

Li, Xia and Nancy Crane. "Bibliographic Formats for Citing Electronic Information." 3 Dec. 1996. http://www.uvm.edu/~ncrane/estyles.html (19 May 1997) 

Walker, Janice. "MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources." Aug. 1996. http://www.cas.usf.edu/english/walker/mla.html (19 May 1997).