At 04:10 PM 5/16/97 EST, Susan Meadows <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>     One of the major problems with the internet is that anyone can put
>     information on it and consequently everyone does.  Students especially
>     are relying more and more on internet information without any form of
>     judgement as to whether the information is valid or not.  This poses a
>     whole new set of problems for those marking essays etc.  If
>     information cited can only be found by doing complicated searches,
>     then it shouldn't be used in the first place.  If your only form of
>     research occurs via the internet, then you should look at your
>     research skills.  There are already some very fat appendices, so what!

I'm barging in here after having deleted most of this thread without having
read it; so, it is possible that the following might already have been noted:

It seems to me that in scholarly citation, the rendition of the sources of
material used actually serves two purposes.  The first of these, of course,
is to lead the reader to the item cited, but, understood and unstated in
conventional scholarly citation is the verification of the "authority" of
the sources used.  If someone cites an article in the Art Bulletin, or a
book published by Princeton University Press, it is assumed that the
material published has passed through a rigorous review procedure, and that
in general it may be accepted as authoritative or representative of a
supportable viewpoint worthy of scholarly attention.

World Wide Web documents, as has been stated already, have not necessarily
been assessed and passed by review and editorial committees, so that a
citation to a page placed by someone who has no authority, whose materials
are not trustworthy, if rendered simply by a finder key, as might be used
for print material, is insufficient. In my opinion, citations to the WWW
should include the usual Author, Title, URL, date, etc., but should also
somehow acknowledge the authority of the information used.

This is not to say that only "certifiably authoritative" resources are
acceptable, but the scholar should be obliged to document and perhaps to
defend his choices of materials.  In addition, because WWW resources are
not published in archival "editions," it may be necessary to include
facsimiles of WWW resources in an appendix. In all other respects I see no
reason why use of WWW resources should differ from conventional published
ones.  Indeed, the availability of so many unauthorized opinions and
unsupportable statements on the WWW may very well open up new avenues for
scholarly analysis -- these contributions not being uninteresting as a
phenomenon.


===========================
Robert A. Baron
Museum Computer Consultant
P.O. Box 93
Larchmont, NY 10538 (USA)
mailto:[log in to unmask]