{"id":2254,"date":"2008-10-16T16:24:35","date_gmt":"2008-10-16T21:24:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoreti.ca\/?p=2254"},"modified":"2008-10-25T14:04:59","modified_gmt":"2008-10-25T19:04:59","slug":"university-affairs-mla-changes-course-on-web-citations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=2254","title":{"rendered":"University Affairs: MLA changes course on web citations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>University Affairs has a story by Tim Johnson on the latest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mla.org\/store\/CID25\/PID341\">MLA Style Manual<\/a>, titled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.universityaffairs.ca\/2008\/10\/06\/mla-changes-course-on-web-citations.aspx\">MLA changes course on web citations&#8221;<\/a>, where they quote me about the new MLA recommendation that URLs aren&#8217;t needed in citations (because they aren&#8217;t reliable.) I had a long discussion with Tim &#8211; being interviewed when they have talked to other people is a strange way to learn about a subject. In retrospect it would have been more useful to point out the emerging alternatives to URLs, some of which are designed to be more stable. Some that I know of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/\">TinyURL<\/a> and similar projects let you get a short (&#8220;tiny&#8221;) URL that redirects to the full location.\u00c2\u00a0 A list of such tools is at http:\/\/daverohrer.com\/15-tinyurl-alternatives-shorten-your-urls\/<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.doi.org\/\">Digital Object Identifier (DOI<sup>\u00c2\u00ae<\/sup>) System<\/a> allows unique identifiers to be allocated and then has a resolution system to point to a location(s). To quote from their Overview, a DOI &#8220;is a name (not a location) for an entity on digital networks. It provides a system for persistent and actionable identification and interoperable exchange of managed information on digital networks.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.archive.org\/index.php\">WayBack Machine<\/a> grabs copies of web pages at regular intervals if allowed. You can thus see changes in the document over time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In short, we don&#8217;t have a clear standard that has emerged, but we have alternatives that could provide us with a stable system.<\/p>\n<p>I should add that the point of a citation is not what is in it, but whether it lets you easily find the referenced research so that we can recapitulate the research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>University Affairs has a story by Tim Johnson on the latest MLA Style Manual, titled &#8220;MLA changes course on web citations&#8221;, where they quote me about the new MLA recommendation that URLs aren&#8217;t needed in citations (because they aren&#8217;t reliable.) I had a long discussion with Tim &#8211; being interviewed when they have talked to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/?p=2254\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">University Affairs: MLA changes course on web citations<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,24,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-culture-and-technology","category-markup-and-text-representation","category-media-and-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theoreti.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}