Singhals <singhals@erols.com> wrote: > It is tempting, oh-so tempting!, to list as a source for > great-grand's marriage something like > http://members.NASA.edu/web/web_page/this.html > and skip the wearisome step of VERIFYING the info in the real > records. > > The problem will arise (that's WILL, as in guaranteed) when, two, > six, eight months or a year from now when you try to go back to > http://members.NASA.edu/web/web_page/this.html > and get a 404- file not found, or a No DNS. > > [snip examples] > > It seems to me that one of several other approaches could be (should > be?) taken -- cite the source (1) as "Jerry Murphy's website, Jul > 2001" or (2) as "Private Communication" or (3) [a personal favorite] > "I read this somewhere." (2) and (3) are unarguable, not open to > verification, and no worse than an invalid URL; (1) at least gives > you a fighting chance of determining whether the website you find > today is the one you saw last year. You are right about the problem, of course. I think the best way to deal with it is to give the URL followed by "Accessed on" and an exact date. I think that most journals which allow e-citations insist on this. There can be no guarantee that it will still be there the next day. -- Don Aitken Don Aitken <don-aitken@freeuk.com>