Web Citation: A Proposal for Standardized Specification

摘要

As every librarian knows, it is diffi-cult for students and scholars alike to cite Web pages accurately in their footnotes and bibliographies. It is not for lack of trying. The multitude of citation styles—AP, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian—and the unique details of each make the task next to impossible. Plus, the citation guides were originally written for printed materials consulted during the research process, not for the electronic sources used by today's students and scholars. Accurate references remain crucial to researchers. As Janice Walker points out in her article "Citing Online: Online Serial Publications and Citations Systems" (The Serials Librarian, v. 33, no. 3/4, 1998: pp. 343-356), "Many of the existing formats for scholarly citations fail to take into account the unique structure of electronic publications, or fail to adequately address some of the specific issues prompted by online publications."