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	University of Technology, Sydney Law Review

• The Major Legal Published Guides
• Other Legal Citation Guides
• The Major Non-Legal Citation Guides
• Other Non-Legal Citation Guides
• Coming up for Air: A Conclusion

Referencing And Citation Of Internet Resources: “The Truth Is Out There

Pearl Rozenberg

Faculty of Law, University of Sydney

With the increase in the use of electronic resources, the question of what, as well as how, to cite and reference these materials was raised. At first there were no standards — it was a free for all. Soon after initial guides were published which were followed by calls to attempt to generate a uniform style of citing these resources, including one by the author at the first AustLII Internet and the Law conference^[1].

Has the minefield of different styles and rules that we cope with in relation to print sources been avoided for electronic information? Has any uniformity developed — either fully or at least of broad principles? Or have we reached the same confusing and contradictory position that we had all hoped to avoid? Following the lead of the televised documentary that investigates the strange and unreal^[2], this paper seeks to assess what has happened since those early calls for uniformity. “The truth is out there”!

The Major Legal Published Guides

There are a very large number of guides for citation and referencing. Seeking to limit the number to a reasonable study (or the 10 pages requested by the organisers), the “major” “legal” “published” guides include:

• French, D. How to Cite Legal Authorities, Blackstone Press, London, 1996;
• Harvard Law Review Association, The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation, 16th edition, Harvard Law Review Association, Cambridge, 1996;^[3]
• University of Chicago Manual of Legal Citation, Lawyers Cooperative Publishing, Rochester, 1989; and
• McGill Law Review, Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, fourth edition, Carswell, Montreal, 1998.

Within Australia, there have been no major guides, beyond the guides published individually by each journal or faculty. In 1998, four general guides were published. Until market forces serve to distinguish between the guides, and with an admitted desire to increase the Australian content of this paper, all the guides will be added to the major published category. These guides are:

• Fong, C. Australian Legal Citation — A Guide, Prospect, Sydney, 1998;
• Melbourne University Law Review Association Inc. Australian Guide to Legal Citation, LULRA Inc., Melbourne, 1999 (see:http://www. law.unimelb.edu.au/mulr/aglc.htm);
• Rozenberg, P. Australian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, LBC Information Services, Sydney, 1998
  (a preliminary version of the electronic-materials section is available at http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v4n4/rozenb44.html); and
• Stuhmcke, A. Legal Referencing, Butterworths, Sydney, 1998.

In itself, that there is such a large list of different guides does not bode well for uniformity of styles. An examination of their individual styles shows marked differences in approach to electronic materials. While The Bluebook recommends against using any such materials, other guides give such materials full acceptance and detailed rules. Of those with rules, the rules given vary in what is required to be given and how it should be presented. For instance, most but not all recommend enclosing URLs in angle brackets, and only some require a date of visit to be given. Even this majority similarity in broad principle is lost when detailed aspects are considered. The order in which items within the citation should be presented varies, as do, quite markedly, detailed rules as to comma placement (or non-placement), initialling (or not) of names, and so on. The table at the end of this paper illustrates the differences. Despite calls for uniformity, no uniformity has arisen.

The only area where uniformity is evident is in the area of citation of cases for courts which have specified particular media and vendor-neutral styles.^[4] For that subset of cases, there is an externally imposed uniformity.

Other Legal Citation Guides

There are many more citation guides serving specific groups such as individual journals or faculties. Some of these include:

• Martin, P. Introduction to Basic Legal Citation, 1997-98 edition, Cornell Law School, http://www.law.cornell.edu/citation/citation.table.html (as at 10 June 1999);
• Queen’s University Law Faculty, Legal Citation, 1997 version, http://qsilver.queensu.ca/law/legalcit.htm (as at 10 June 1999);
• Bohill, R. Electronic Citation Guide for Legal Resources, http://law.anu.edu.au/nglrw/lr3.htm (as at 10 June 1999);
• Murdoch University Library, Legal Citation Guide, 1996 version, http://carmen.murdoch.edu.au/~zariski/citation.html#b4l (as at 10 June 1999); and
• Modes of Citation, http://www.ncl.ac.uk/nuls/lectures/legwrit/citation.htm.

The same lack of uniformity evident among the major guides is shown in the smaller guides.

The Major Non-Legal Citation Guides

While there will be debate concerning which guides should be included in this section, at least the following will have general agreement.^[5]

• “APA Guide”: the American Psychological Association’s Publication manual of the American Psychological Association,^[6] presently publishing a new edition, which will include Internet referencing, so nothing is available on the official site, but the unofficial site by authors of the electronic amendments to the APA Guide is http://www.uvm.edu/~xli/reference/apa.html, (as at 10 June 1999); or Land, T. Web Extension to American Psychological Association Style (WEAPAS), Rev. 1.6, http://www.beadsland.com/weapas/ (as at 10 June 1999);
• “MLA Guide”: the Modern Language Association’s MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (official website for the MLA, which gives the Internet rules, is http://www.mla.org/main_stl.htm, as at 10 June 1999);
• Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993;
• Patrias, K. National Library of Medicine Recommended Formats for Bibliographic Citation, US Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland, 1991; and
• International Standards Organization, International Standard ISO 690-2. Information and documentation — Bibliographic references — Part 2: Electronic documents or parts thereof, 1999 version, excerpts of printed on the Web at http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/standard/690-2e.htm (as at 10 June 1999).

Stand-alone guides include:

• Walker, J. The Columbia Guide to Online Style, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998;
• Li, X. and Crane, N. Electronic Styles: A Handbook for Citing Electronic Information, Information Today, Medford, 1996; and
• Harnack, A. and Kleppinger, E. Online!: A Reference Guide to Using Internet Sources, St Martin’s Press, New York, 1997.

In addition, there are subject-specific guides, such as citation of comic art. For instance:

• Ellis, A. Comic Art in Scholarly Writing: A citation guide, Popular Culture Association, at http://www.sp.uconn.edu/~epk93002/CAC/cite.html (as at 10 June 1999).

The major guides are in the process of publishing full guides, while the stand-alone guides have already published their guidelines for Internet citation. There is absolutely no uniformity shown among the major non-legal guides, as the following example shows:^[7]

• ISO Format (International Standards Organization): Robinson, B. A. “End of the World Predictions”, Kingston, Canada, in Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, published 19 July 1996, revised 10 October 1998 and cited 10 December 1998. See: URL:http://www.
  religioustolerance.org/end_wrld.htm;
• APA Format (American Psychological Association): Robinson, B. A. “End of the World Predictions”, in Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 19 July 1996. See: http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrld.htm (as at 12 October 1998);
• MLA Format (Modern Language Association): Robinson, B. A. “End of the World Predictions”, in Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, 1998. See: http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrld.htm (as at 12 October 1998); and
• Li and Crane: Robinson, B. A. “End of the World Predictions”, in Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. See: URL: http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrld.htm.

Other Non-Legal Citation Guides

There are very many guides for particular purposes. Locations of “gateway” sites — that is sites that list numerous sites on a topic — include:

• the Internet Public Library, Citing Electronic Resources (1998 version), http://www.ipl.org/ref/QUE/FARQ/netciteFARQ.html (as at 10 June 1999);
• International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, Citation Guides for Electronic Resources http://www.ifla.org/I/training/citation/citing.htm (as at 10 June 1999);
• Purdue University Online Writing Law, Resources for Writers: Documenting Electronic Sources (1999 version), http://owl.english.purdue.edu/writers/documenting.html (as at 10 June 1999);
• University of Sydney, Citing electronic resources, http://itt.
  library.usyd.edu.au/imagemap/internet98/UG/citing.html (as at 15 April 1999); and
• Emory University, A Field Guide to Sources on, About, and on the Internet, 1997, http://www.cc.emory.edu/WHSCL/citation.formats.html (as at 10 June 1999).

A review of these sites and the citation guides they describe reveals absolutely no uniformity of style. The further one looks the more styles emerge.

Coming up for Air: A Conclusion

Having delved into the depths of citation style, one is left gasping for air, reeling with shock and surprised at the general murkiness of those depths. There is no uniformity at all within any of the guides. No common standard has appeared, and it would appear no chance of one doing so in the future.

No, Mulder, it’s not a conspiracy. It’s just a mess.

[1] P. Rozenberg, “Developing a Standard for Legal Citation of Electronic Information”, ELAW Vol 4, No 4, 1997, http://www.murdoch.edu.au/elaw/issues/v4n4/rozenb44.html

[2] “The X-Files”, presently showing on Channel 10. See http://www.thex-files.com/

[3] Writers in California (using the California Style Manual) and Texas (Texas Rules of Form) may object to the inclusion of the Bluebook in this list. All that can be said is that from the angle from which one views the debate in Australia, the Bluebook has the market. Certainly, a survey of quantity of comment about the guides on the Internet shows the most comment about the Bluebook (although quite what the statistic indicates is unclear).

[4] For a list of the courts which have adopted these methods in Australia, see P. Chung, “Medium Neutral Citation: A Comparison”, http://lawfoundation.net.au/lisc/recommend/chart.html (as at 10 June 1999).

[5] Further guides are listed by Dr Travel’s Self Help Guide to Legal Citation, http://www.freedomlaw.com/LegCitations.html (as at 10 June 1999).

[6] For examples of legal citations within the APA style, see http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/infosrv/lue/sowk/apa.html (as at 10 June 1999)

[7] These first four examples ares copied from Religious Tolerance.org, “Citing Internet References in Essays”, http://www.religioustolerance.org/int_cita.htm (as at 10 June 1999). The remainder are compiled by the author.