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Traditionally, historians have relied on the University of Chicago or Turabian style of citing footnotes. A good online selection of Chicago Style examples can be found at the University of Wisconsin, Madison Writing Center, while the University of Chicago has placed the Chicago Manual of Style FAQ online. Janice R. Walker and Todd Taylor have tried to prepare a similar guide for electronic documents citation for the Humanities and the Sciences in the Columbia Guide to Online Style (1998) available in abbreviated form online, while the full, printed version can be ordered at the site.
To date, bibliographers and scholars have not yet reached any consensus as
to the proper way of citing electronic documents found on databases,
cd-rom's, and on line. Yet there have been efforts to formulate standards
as noted in Lisa Guernsey, "Cyberspace Citations: Scholars debate how best
to cite research conducted on the Internet," in The Chronicle of Higher
Education, January 12, 1996, pp. A18, A20-21.
Professor Melvin E. Page of East Tennessee State University, co-editor of H-Africa--one of the H-Net internet mailing lists, has suggested one set of standards, "A Brief Citation Guide for Internet Sources in History and the Humanities."
Professor Maurice A. Crouse of the Department of History at the University of Memphis has developed a useful guide for dealing with "Citing electronic information in history papers."
University of Vermont reference librarians Xia Li and Nancy B. Crane, authors of Electronic Style: A Guide to Citing Electronic Information (Meckler, 1991) have put citation examples on line in "Bibliographic Formats for Citing Electronic Information," included in Electronic Styles: A Handbook for Citing Electronic Information, Revised edition (Medford, NJ: Meckler, 1996) which includes citation guidelines based on the American Psychological Association (APA) and Modern Language Association (MLA) styles.
The Modern Language Association (MLA) provides some guidance at its web site with examples based on the MLA Style for citing Internet materials.
Professors Andrew Harnack and Gene Kleppinger and of Eastern Kentucky University have written a paper, "Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Electronic Sources on the Internet," which uses MLA standards to suggest ways of citing electronic sources.
The Library of Congress' American Memory Project includes a well done aid entitled, "Citing Electronic Sources" with links to other sources including guides for citing in different disciplines.
The Internet Public Library operated by the University of
Michigan School of Information and Library Studies has an
excellent collection of material and links on
"Citing Electronic Resources," while the University of Alberta offers a good
selection of
Style Guides on the Internet.
As the study of popular culture has broadened, so have references to non- traditional materials, such as comic books. So the Popular Culture Association's Allen Ellis now provides help with "Comic Art in Scholarly Writing: A Citation Guide."
Last updated on October 26, 2003
Department of History