1997 saw the publication of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence!: Citation & Analysis for the Family Historian, the first major publication dealing with citation in genealogy since Richard Lackey’s 1981 Cite Your Sources. A lot had happened in the information world during the intervening sixteen years—the dramatic impact of electronic data center stage. As a result, Mills found herself needing to suggest citation methods for numerous forms of electronic media, including CD-ROMs, computer software, electronic mail messages, and World Wide Web sites.

In the case of information obtained from Web sites, Mills provides four different examples depending on the nature of the material, including:

• Electronic database (family file)
  
• Electronic file (image from public archives)
  
• Electronic Web site
  
• Electronically published paper (previously published in hard copy)

Because Mills recognizes that citation formats for electronic documents are in a state of flux, and because she knows that her book cannot comprehensively cover the variety of available electronic document formats, she recommends that the reader refer to a number of specialized resources listed in the book’s bibliography.

Experts Say . . .
Examining the citation sources suggested by Mills in her bibliography, as well as others available on the Web and able to be located using directories such as Yahoo!, you would find that the aforementioned state of flux translates into a lack of complete agreement among experts in the field. Of course, if you are writing for publication in a scholarly journal, the journal usually dictates the method you should use to cite your sources. But what if you have complete freedom, perhaps because you are publishing your own family history or family newsletter? Even the Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed.) suggests that the only truly important thing is that your style be “clear, effective, and consistently followed,” even though it may not precisely match the examples they provide.

Given this, I’ll save you a little research time by pulling together the advice of various experts, while adding my own opinions to the mix. To avoid duplicating material found in either Mills’ book or in the Chicago Manual of Style, I’ll assume that you already know how to cite basic print sources (especially common ones such as books and journal articles). Let’s begin by noting that every citation of Web-based information should answer each of the four basic questions: who, what, when, and where.

The First Question: Who?
First and foremost, you should attempt to identify the author(s) of each Web-based source. This piece of information is critical for at least two reasons: (1) at the end of your document, you’ll usually be providing a list of your “Works Cited,” alphabetized by the author’s last name; and (2) in the body of your document, you’ll usually be indicating the reference by the use of the author’s name in parentheses.

Finding the name of the Web page author is often a challenge. Unlike a book or journal article, a Web page has no standardized location for the author’s name, although most typically it will be near the beginning (as it is in the following reference) or near the end.

Gehring, Jake. “Social Security Death Master File: A Much Misunderstood Index.” Ancestry HomeTown. 1997. <http://www.ancestry.com/ssdi/article.htm> (13 December 1997).

If you cannot immediately find a name, there are several tricks you can try. Use your browser’s ability to view the Web page’s HTML source, in case the author’s name appears in a comment that is not normally displayed by the browser. If the page is part of a collection, visit the collection’s home page, either by following links from the current page or by guessing the home page address (by deleting pieces of the URL starting at the right).

Just because you find a name on the Web page does not necessarily mean the named individual is the author—that person may merely be the “webmaster” or “maintainer,” a role somewhat akin to editor. If you are able to draw a conclusion from the information you have, clearly identify the role of the individual in your “Works Cited.”

Smith, Drew, maint. Librarians Serving Genealogists. 24 September 1997. <http://www.cas.usf.edu/
lis/genealib> (13 December 1997).

If you cannot clearly identify a specific author by name, but can associate the document with an association, corporation, government agency, or other organization, list the organization as the author. You may be able to determine this by examining the Web address.

USGenWeb Project. USGenWeb Project. 4 December 1997. <http://www.usgenweb.net> (13 December 1997).

Ancestry, Incorporated Ancestry HomeTown. <http://www.ancestry.com> (13 December 1997).

U.S. Library of Congress. Library of Congress Home Page. 20 November 1997. <http://www.loc.gov>: (13 December 1997).

However, be careful not to list an organization as the author if the organization is merely acting as an Internet Service Provider (ISP)—in other words, when the ISP is providing storage space for the Web page but is otherwise unaffiliated with it.

In some cases, you will have to content yourself with the idea that the work is anonymous. In such cases, you’ll need to list the work in your “Works Cited” solely by its title.

The Second Question: What?
With few exceptions, every Web page has a title. Still, it can be tricky figuring out which of several different possibilities is the appropriate title to use in your citation. One candidate is the title that appears in your browser window’s title bar when you display the Web page. This title is generated by the Web page’s “TITLE” tags, and is used by search engines and directories for indexing and display purposes. The downside of using this title is that it is often abbreviated. Also, some Web pages do not use “TITLE” tags, and as a result, no title appears in the window’s title bar.

Another candidate is a title that may appear in large bold letters at the beginning of the document, usually generated by “H1” tags. If this title is identical to that which appears in the window’s title bar (or if no title appears in the title bar), you have extra confidence that this is the appropriate title to use. If the two titles differ, you may wish to use the title that provides the most information. This decision strikes me as a judgment call.

Experts disagree to some extent over the appropriate punctuation to use when citing Web page titles. While some recommend using quotation marks for all titles, others treat Web pages as complete works, the same as books, pamphlets, and brochures. As a result, they suggest that the title of a Web page should be underlined or italicized as book titles are.

An exception to this rule would be a Web page that is part of a larger, named collection. In this case, the title of the Web page would be properly placed in quotation marks (as if it were a journal article), and the name of the larger collection would be underlined or italicized just after the Web page title (as if it were a journal).

Gormley, Myra Vanderpool. “Irish Links in the Emerald Isle.” Shaking Your Family Tree. 11 December 1997. <http://www.ancestry.com/home/
Myra_Vanderpool_Gormley\Shaking_Family_Tree12-11-97.htm> (13 December 1997).

The Third Question: When?
Unlike a printed journal article (which usually comes out only once) or a book (which rarely comes out more often than in clearly-dated annual editions), it is quite possible for a Web page to be updated numerous times in the course of a single day! As with authors, the dates of publication tend to have a standard location in books and journals, while Web pages do not adhere to any standard. With any luck, however, the date of creation or of latest update can be found with the author’s name near the beginning or near the end. Fortunately, many Web pages contain at least a copyright date, which can be used if no other date is available.

DearMYRTLE [Pat Richley]. The Best of DearMYRTLE. 1997. <http://www.ancestry.com/
home/Myrtlearch.htm> (13 December 1997).

If you cannot easily locate the date on the page itself, you can adopt a strategy similar to that used to locate the author: Examine the HTML source or locate the home page. However, unless the home page indicates that all linked pages in the collection were created on the same day, you may not be able to use any date found on the home page as the date of the page you’re citing, since each page in the collection may have been produced at a different time.

In addition to providing the date of publication of the Web page, most experts agree that you should also provide the date you yourself accessed the information. By doing so, you are helping your readers understand why their view of the cited page may differ from yours, since the page may have been updated between the time you accessed it and the time they did.

The Fourth Question: Where?
The easiest of the four major elements to document is the location of the information, namely, the URL of the Web page. Regarding this element, experts tend to disagree only about what punctuation to use to surround the URL. Because many citation styles use periods to separate different elements of the citation, and because URLs may contain periods themselves, one of the best solutions is to enclose the entire URL in angle brackets (< and >) to clearly delineate the beginning and ending of the URL.

Eastman, Dick. “Kentucky Genealogies #1, 1700s-1800s on CD-ROM.” Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter. 8 December 1997. <http://www.ancestry.com/home/Dick_Eastman/
eastdec08.htm> (13 December 1997).

In a small number of cases, you may also have to document additional steps the reader must take to obtain the information once they have reached the URL. For instance, if the reader must enter a keyword into a search box or select an item from a menu in order to reach the page you are citing, you’ll need to explain these additional steps in detail; this explanation can be included immediately after the URL itself.

For Further Reading
In addition to the previously mentioned Mills book and the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, a number of Web sites suggest ways of doing proper citations:

Janice R. Walker, a fellow instructor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, has written Columbia Online Style: MLA-Style Citations of Electronic Sources. Walker’s format has been endorsed by the Alliance for Computers & Writing (ACW).

Andrew Harnack and Gene Kleppinger of Eastern Kentucky University have identified four potential problems with Walker’s recommendations, and as a result have proposed solutions in their paper, Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Electronic Sources on the Internet. Among their suggestions are the use of angle brackets to enclose URLs and e-mail addresses and the consistent use of access dates (placed at the end of the citation).

George H. Hoemann of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville has produced Electronic Style, a collection of Web pages that address various aspects of the citation problem.

T. Land tackles many details involving APA-style citation in Web Extension to American Psychological Association Style (WEAPAS).

Conclusion
The current number of Web pages is well in excess of 100 million, and the growth of the Web continues unabated. As genealogists, libraries, universities, government agencies, and other individuals and organizations continue to publish on the Web, those of us engaged in writing about genealogy will be obligated to learn a clear and consistent method of citing our Web-based sources. Clearly we cannot afford to wait until the standard format “settles down,” because there is no telling when that will happen—assuming that it ever does. Meanwhile, we must depend on a combination of general citation style manuals, books that specifically address genealogical citation, the opinions of experts in the field, and last but certainly not least, our own common sense.

Drew Smith is technology administrator for the AOL Genealogy Forum. He can be reached at drewsmith@aol.com.