Citation of Electronic Sources

and Meta Tags

Referencing (giving citations) means that you indicate which material is not your own and show where you got it from. There are several different referencing systems, each subject area tends to use it's own system of citations. Whatever style you choose it is important to be consistent, complete and accurate. This matters not only for books and articles, but electronic sources as well. Here are some links on citing electronic resources.
• Bibliographic Formats for Citing Electronic Information
  The suggested citation formats are bases on Xia Li & Nancy Crane's Electronic Styles: A Handbook for Citing Electronic Information (1996). The book follows two common citation conventions, APA & MLA, and adds embellishments to represent the unique features of electronic information.

• Bibliography on Evaluating Internet Resources
  A list of documents which address the problems and issues related to teaching and using critical thinking skills to evaluate Internet resources. Compiled by: Nicole Auer (Library Instruction Coordinator, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University).

• Citing Sources
  Most of the commonly used style guides (such as the MLA Handbook, Turabian's manual, etc.) give little or no assistance in correctly constructing footnotes, endnotes or bibliography entries for electronic materials. Fortunately, there are several online documents which offer advice on how to cite WWW, gopher, ftp, and other network resources. Presented by the Library Web Team of the Samford University Library, USA.

• GALILEO: Giving Credit Where Credit is Due Resources
  General information on citing electronic resources, and references to APA and MLA style guides. Includes a discussion of copyright and the perils of plagiarism.

• How do you cite URL's in a bibliography?
  Very brief guide with a few examples.

• Learning Research Skills
  Information Services and Resources (ISR), Bucknell University, USA.

• Lester, James. D. [1997]
  Citing Cyberspace: A quick Reference Guide to Citing Electronic Sources in MLA and APA Styles

• Olson, Nancy B. (ed.)
  Cataloging Internet Resources - A Manual and Practical Guide
  It discusses the Anglo American Cataloguing Rules, the applicable US Machine Readable Cataloging (USMARC) tagging, and the International Standard Bibliographic Description for Electronic Resources [ISBD(ER)].

• Ready Reference Style Guides
  LSU Libraries has compiled a listing of citation Guides for Internet Sources: APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, and other.

• Tonella, Karla (University of Iowa, USA)
  Karla's Guide to Citation Style Guides

• Walker, Janice R. / Taylor, Todd
  Colombia Guide to Online Style
  A guide to locating, translating, and using the elements of citation for both a humanities style (i.e., MLA and Chicago) and a scientific style (APA and CBE) for electronically-accessed sources. It is a useful reference book for citing electronic sources regardless of the specific bibliographic style you may be required to use. It includes a style sheet for citing FTP, Web, Telnet, MOO, MUD, IRC, Gopher, Listserv, and Newslist sources.

APA Style of Citation

• Amato, Carol J.
  The World's Easiest Guide to Using the APA - Stargazer Publishing Company.
  On this site you get "a peek between the covers".

• American Psychological Assiociation (APA)
  APA Publication Manual FAQ
  The APA's own set of answers to Frequently Asked Questions.

• Borst, W. [1996-2000] - Troy State University, USA
  Guidelines for Writing in APA Style
  It simulated an APA paper and lists grammar and punctuation and usage rules.

• Corio, Ron / Sokolik, Maggi [1995]
  APA Style Guide
  Version 2.1, Modified October 1995.

• Dewey, Russ
  APA Style Resources

• A Guide for Writing Research Papers
  based on Styles Recommended by the American Psychological Association
  A guide that is based on a document prepared in 1995 by Patricia S. Burgess. And it is subsequently modified and updated for use on the World Wide Web by members of the Humanities Department and library staff at Capital Community-Technical College (CCTC) in Hartford, Connecticut. The site also presents other useful CCTC guides.
  • The first one is based on the documentation style recommended by the Modern Language Association. The guide contains numerous suggestions about getting started on a research paper and a statement on plagiarism that should prove useful to beginning researchers.
  • The second one Library and Information Skills Workbook, is an introduction to using library and online resources. The workbook has chapters on finding books and journal articles, using CD-ROM databases, discovering resources on the internet, developing critical thinking skills, and designing a search strategy.
  • For improving your art of writing you can use the last one: Guide to Grammer and Writing. It provides numerous digital handouts about grammar and style, ninety-nine computer-graded quizzes, guidance on essay writing, and a place to ask questions about grammar and writing.

• Land, T.
  Web Extension to American Psychological Association Style (WEAPAS)

• Li, Xia / Crane, Nancy [1997]
  APA Style of Citation
  The APA-authorized guidelines for citing Internet resources.

• Plonsky, Mark [2000] - University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point
  Psychology with Style
  A hypertekst writing guide.

• Wagner, K. [1999]
  (Sarah Byrd Askew Library, William Paterson University of New Jersey)
  Guide for Citing Electronic Information
  Based on "Electronic Styles: A Handbook for Citing Electronic Information" (1996) by Li, X. & Crane, Nancy.

MLA Style of Citation

The style recommended by the Modern Language Association (MLA) for preparing scholarly manuscripts and student research papers concerns itself with the mechanics of writing, such as punctuation, quotation, and documentation of sources. MLA style has been widely adopted by schools, academic departments, and instructors for nearly half a century. MLA guidelines are also currently used by over 125 scholarly and literary journals, newsletters, and magazines with circulations over one thousand; by hundreds of smaller periodicals; and by many university and commercial presses.
• MLA Style
  The MLA-authorized guidelines for citing Internet resources. The style recommended by the Modern Language Association for preparing scholarly manuscripts and student research papers concerns itself with the mechanics of writing, such as punctuation, quotation, and documentation of sources. MLA style has been widely adopted by schools, academic departments, and instructors for nearly half a century.The guidelines include fourteen items to consider in a citation and several examples.
  • The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers is an authoritative explanation of MLA style for high school and undergraduate college students. It contains chapters on preparing, writing, and formatting the research paper.
  • The MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing is aimed at graduate students, scholars, and professional writers. It is a comprehensive guide to preparing research papers and contains detailed information on using computers for research and writing and on citing electronic publications. It also advises advises students on how to use electronic catalogs, central information systems, and CD-ROM and online databases in research; use computers to compile bibliographies, take notes, and outline and write research papers; cite electronic publications, including CD-ROMs, diskettes, magnetic tapes, and online databases.

• Li, Xia / Crane, Nancy
  Electronic Sources: MLA Style of Citation
  The MLA-authorized guidelines for citing Internet resources.

Meta Tags

General Information

• Back to Basics: META Tags written by Scott Clark and presented by WebDeveloper.com.

• A Dictionary of HTML META Tags

• How To Use HTML Meta Tags (SearchEngineWatch).

• HTML's META-tag by Alan Richmont.

• IMS Metadata Specification
  A set of specifications designed for the description of educational resources on the Internet by academic, commercial, and governmental organizations through the use of metadata. If you embed IMS metadata into a given resource, retrieval of the resource by search engines and software designed to interpret the metadata will be facilitated. The site contains a dictionary of fields and values as well as the organization of these fields and values into groups. Some of these groups were adopted from the Dublin Core metadata element set. IMS metadata includes learning level, users support, educational objectives, price code etc. Presented by: Educom's Instructional Management Systems (IMS) Project.

• HTML 4.0 Specification from W3C.

• META Tag Resources
  This list of meta tag links is presented by WebDeveloper.com. It contains general resources and meta tag software & services.

• Search Engines and META Tags
  Before posting or submitting pages to search engines, indexes and directories using robots, you can follow this short guide to achieve the desired result.

• Tips & Tricks: Meta Tags - The Decline.

Meta Tag Software and Services

• MetaDesigner - Sofitware
  A simple but effective generator that creates six main meta tags: title, description, keywords, author, copyright, and publisher.

• Meta Medic lets you check the efficiency and acceptability of your Meta tages..
  
  
  Enter URL:  
  
  

• META Tag Builder
  A form that generates HTML META tags suitable for inclusion in your HTML document.

• Meta Tag Generator - SiteUp Networks
  A Windows 95 Meta-Tag Generator that automatically genenerate META tags used by search engines to index your pages.

Editor: dr. Albert Benschop Department of Sociology and Anthropology Social & Behavioral Sciences University of Amsterdam Created: September, 1996 Last modified: 11th January, 2006