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INTERNET
Huge quantities of information are
now available electronically via the
Internet. Most college students now
have access to the World Wide Web,
either on computers at school or at
home by dialing up a server with a
modem. Electronic texts (or "e-texts")
are popping up more and more in
research papers.
There are a number of reasons
for this. On one hand, the internet
gives users access to the
information on hundreds of
thousands of servers throughout
the world-the breadth and depth
of available knowledge is
incredible.
On the other hand, the
documents on the
internet are "surfable"
from a single location,
bringing a global library
to your computer .
However, several
problems have arisen
from this surge in the
availability and popularity
of electronically-
accessed information.
First, many students have no idea how
to cite electronic texts. Only the most
current style manuals give any hint as
to how to write a reference entry for ,
say , a Web page; even then, the
citation formats are sometimes
confusing and outdated. Interestingly
enough, it is Web sites like this one
that can help solve this problem.
Second, compared to print-based
resources, e-texts are relatively
unstable. While a book consists of
information encoded in ink on a
printed page, an e-text exists as
magnetic pulses over a telephone
line.
As anyone who uses
computers can tell you,
though, servers go down
and phone connections get
cut. Electronic documents
can literally be here today
and gone tomorrow .
As we've mentioned before,
the whole purpose of a
reference is to allow readers
to find a source themselves.
If the source itself no longer
exists, this causes problems
for validity and verification.
One possible solution to this
problem is to keep careful
records. Saving e-texts (either
as screenshots or text files)
will allow you to produce the
source for a reader , even if
the document has disappeared
from the server on which you
found it.
In addition, it's also wise to
use many different types of
documents-books and
journals, as well as e-texts-
rather than relying heavily
on one kind of source.
Author(s) of document
(on-line journals) if a
volume and issue
number is given, it will
probably be in the
header for the document,
close to the title
Location of document