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Summary: Online Citations - Part 2
Other opinions hold that online references are useful in spite of these
shortcomings, and can't/shouldn't be ignored.
Michael A. Domaratz <[log in to unmask]> provided a detailed description
of the format developed by the Federal Geographic Data Committee's work
on the metadata standard to cite online reference material. It's 129
lines long so I'll not include it here (I'll explain how to get the
full, unedited version in just a bit), but it seems to cover just about
everything there is to list in a citation. He also listed the follwoing
references:
Clark, Suzanne, Larsgaard, Mary, and Teague, Cynthia, 1992,
Cartographic citations: A style guide: Chicago, American Library
Association, Map and Geography Roundtable.
Dodd, Susan, 1982, Cataloging machine-readable data files: Chicago,
American Library Association.
Hansen, Wallace R., 1991, Suggestions to Authors of the Reports of
the United States Geological Survey (7th ed.): Washington, U.S.
Government Printing Office.
Li, Xia, and Crane, Nancy, 1993, Electronic style: A guide to citing
electronic information: Westport, Connecticut, Meckler
Publishing.
Network Development and MARC Standards Office, 1988, USMARC format
for bibliographic data: Washington, Library of Congress,
Cataloging Distribution Service.
Patrias, Karen, 1991 (April), National Library of Medicine
recommended formats for bibliographic citations: Bethesda,
Maryland, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public
Health Service, National Institutes of Health, National Library of
Medicine.
He further mentions that Patrias (1991) and Li and Crane (1993) discuss
citations of all forms of materials, and may be the most helpful in the
FAQ reference question.
Although no one brought this up in the respones I recieved, I think
I'll mention a pointer to information about the Universal Resource
Locator, or URL, because the URL seems to me like the best available
convention that I've see so far for providing a machine-readable pointer
to an online resource. It can handle FTP, telnet, gopher, Prospero,
http, and even e-mail type resources. There's also a scheme for
extending the definition to include new resources as they develop.
The document "Uniform Resource Locators (URL) A Syntax for the
Expression of Access Information of Objects on the Network" by Tim
Berners-Lee appears to be the authoritative source for information about
the URL. I found the latest copy by gopher searching for
"Brenners-Lee", and found it straight away.
The document I have expires on Sept 21, 1994, and also specifically
addresses this citation problem stating,
`Internet Drafts are working documents valid for a maximum of six
months. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by
other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet
Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a "working
draft" or "work in progress".'
If you want to get this yourself, it's available in hypertext form, with
links to background information, as:
http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/Addressing/URL/Overview.html
You can also use FTP to connect to info.cern.ch, and get a plain text
copy (this info on FTP is about 4 months old, but it worked for me then).
That's it for the suummary. Thanks to all who responded. I can see
several interesting issues boiling here just under the surface of this
issue, and hopefully this provides some real info and some food for
thought. If you want the raw grist for your mills, I'll send the
280-line uncut version of responses to anyone who asks for it.
_ /| Bill Thoen
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