16.3: Traditional Style Guidelines and New Media

Just when word processors finally automated the process of footnoting, the Modern Language Association (MLA) decided that we should cite sources using parenthetic notes instead. And when Microsoft Word 2007 included an automatic (sort of) bibliography generator, MLA responded by changing its formats so the generator is useless. (3) Of course, bibliography generators generally aren’t very good (they are all GIGO—Garbage In, Garbage Out—after all). Nonetheless, it does seem that whenever a technology emerges that can facilitate the process of documenting sources, MLA changes its rules. Now, MLA has decreed that we have to include the medium of publication, even for books and journal articles (the medium for these, by the way, is “print”). For journal articles accessed through library databases, it is no longer necessary to include the library information (which was silly anyway—if you know the name of the database, you can access it from any library that subscribes to it, but you can’t access a library’s resources if you aren’t a patron of that library). Instead, MLA now stipulates that one should designate the medium as “Web” for these resources. Technically, of course, library databases aren’t on the web although they are accessed (usually) through a web portal. So, are you confused yet?

To make matters worse, MLA has now decreed that it is no longer necessary to include the Uniform Resource Locator, or URL (the Internet address), for sources that are on the web (182). Why? Because many students, teachers, and scholars were trying to type in very long and complex URLs that didn’t work anyway, perhaps because they don’t understand that many URLs are created dynamically and can’t be accessed just by typing them into a browser. In other words, because many people did not seem to be able to figure out how to cite Internet sources, many styles have all but given up. Hey, you can just Google it, right? 4 The American Psychological Association (APA)5 now contends that, if a scholar has reason to believe that a given source accessed online is the “same” as the printed version, then perhaps citing the print source instead of the version actually consulted might be okay (271). In case you can’t tell, I disagree that URLs should be omitted from these entries.

Moreover, if a source happens to be in some format other than “print” or HTML (that is, “Web”), the medium gets, well, even more complicated. MLA now requires that we designate the medium for all sources—web, print, Microsoft Word document, JPEG, television, radio, DVD, CD, PDF, and so on. In other words, we have to know a lot of things about a given source that most of us don’t know—and, quite frankly, usually don’t need to know:

An important feature of electronic files is that they are readily
transferable from one medium to another: files may be downloaded
from their online homes and saved to disks; CD-ROM
titles may be installed on a user’s hard drive; and most formats
may be printed out. For this reason, identifying the publication
medium in the bibliographic reference may be meaningless.
It certainly violates the principle of economy in that the
protocol or publication information is usually sufficient to locate
the source. (Walker and Taylor 57)

Our computers usually know how to handle files—regardless of publication media—from the file extension (the letters after the “dot” in a file name) regardless of whether a given file is online, downloaded to a hard drive or diskette, included on a CD-ROM, or whatever. I do not need to tell my computer what program to use to open a file as long as I have the software to open it. Of course, if my computer doesn’t have the software installed, then, yes, I may need to do some research to find out the type of file and what software to use to open it—but even this process is often automated (try opening a file that your computer doesn’t recognize; most operating systems and browsers will offer to search the web for the application for you, for good or ill).

If you’re beginning to think that citation styles are just too complicated, you may be right. However, they don’t have to be. There really is a logic to citing sources, whether they are online, in print, or in some other medium, now extant or yet to be developed.