On Tue, 22 Apr 2003, Singhals 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. No doubt about it, the vanishing URL will always be a problem on the web. You probably already know this, but the best solution is to not rely solely on the URL in your citations. Add more access points (to toss out a little library jargon). For example: Author or creator, title or name of record series, city, county state, name of agency that produced or published the records, etc. This is kinda like when people come in the library with just a call number ("I don't know what this is but I have to pick it up for my kid") and the call number is wrong. Sometimes we can figure it out, sometimes we can't. So that's why it's a good idea to know the author, title, subject matter, publisher, whatever. But you're probably well-acquainted with good citation styles. BTW, people are working on a solution, the Permanent Uniform Resource Locator. See: http://www.purl.org/ -=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=-=+=- Webmaster: Cynthia Van Ness, MLS -- roots@bfn.org Roots: The Buffalo NY Genealogy Forum -- http://www.bfn.org/~roots With obits, vital records, city directories & hundreds of local links