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Several bloggers noticed yesterday that the US National Library of Medicine (NLM, which is part of the NIH: National Institutes of Health) has a style guide for citing blogs:
- C. Sample Citation and Introduction to Citing Blogs
- Citation Rules with Examples for Blogs
- Examples of Citations to Blogs
Hat tips:
- Paul Kedrosky, Infectious Greed: Ooooh, Blogs are Now Authoritative, who cites:
- Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution How to Cite a Blog, who cites:
- Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing HOWTO cite blogs in formal academic medical papers, who cites:
- Joshua Schwimmer, Kidney Notes "How to Cite Blogs" by the NIH / National Library of Medicine
The NLM's definition of a blog isn't bad:
Blog is a contraction of Web log. A blog is a publicly available Web site that serves as a personal journal or sounding board for an individual or as an information tool for an organization. The blog owner posts messages and invites comments from readers. Entries or messages are displayed in reverse chronological order and the site is usually updated daily.
But the guide itself is several years late and still flawed.
Paul Kedrosky:
I don't think it makes sense to give a generic URL, rather than a specific one, but it's a start.
Alex Tabarrok:
Bizarrely, however, they include a space for "Place of Publication."
c18 in a comment at Marginal Revolution:
the style guide appears to be based on book format, when it should resemble a periodical. There should be an article title as well as the blog title
RADIOGUY in a comment at BoingBoing:
"blog on the Internet" ???
IIRC, blog is short for weblog, which implies the World Wide Web, which is most certainly on the Internet.
Where else would the blog be?!
Plus:
- includes the year the blog was founded (which is largely useless)
- omits the actual date of publication
I couldn't find a publication date for the document; I guess they follow their own bad advice.
If you wish to cite this publication, please use the following format:
Patrias, Karen. Citing medicine: the NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers [Internet]. 2nd ed. Wendling, Daniel L., technical editor. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); 2007 [insert Year Month Day]. Available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/citingmedicine
Yet another gripe: the above sample omits the useful "cited" prefix. As is, it's not immediately clear which Year Month Day to insert (date found rather than date posted).
A style guide for citing blogs isn't new; here's The Columbia Guide to Online Style (CGOS) by Janice R. Walker and Todd Taylor, though it shares the flaw of linking to the blog's home page rather than the individual post's permalink and omits the useful "cited" prefix.
Humanities Style
Cite blogs or wikis similarly to citing mailing list or newsgroup postings, including the name (or alias) of the author, the title of the posting (if applicable), the title of the site, the date of posting, and the address of the site, followed by the date of access enclosed in parentheses.
Scientific StyleBartow, Ann. “Parody Is Fair Use!” Sivacracy.net. 26 Mar. 2006. http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/ (30 Mar. 2006).
Include the name or alias of the author, the date of posting, the title or subject line of the posting (if available), the title of the site, the URL, and the date of access.
Bartow, A. (2006, March 26). Parody is fair use! Sivacracy.net. http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/ (30 Mar. 2006).
(Emphasis added.)
More useful, 2 items from Dennis G. Jerz (of Jerz's Literacy Weblog) back in 2003. Citing a Weblog Entry in MLA Style:
Jerz, Dennis G. "Citing a Weblog in MLA Style." [Weblog entry.] Jerz's Literacy Weblog. Seton Hill University. 11 Dec 2003. (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=2000). 11 Dec 2003.
And Citing a Weblog Comment in MLA Style:
"Susan" (smgct1@comcast.net). "Oddly enough..." [Weblog comment.] N.d. "More Questionable Use of My Work." Dennis G. Jerz. Jerz's Literacy Weblog. Seton Hill University. 10 Dec 2003. (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink.jsp?id=1998)
(See both posts for more details.)
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Posts
Nothing can be cited without a link that permanently resolves directly to the cited page, yet they fail to mention permalinks.
They make an issue about the "date retrieved", no doubt realizing that a page's contents can change without changing the URL, but just recording the date you saw something helps neither you nor the reader. Sure publication dates can be faked, but so can the whole page, so you might as well not pick and choose.
I've read about 10 posts on this so far, and it's clear to me that misunderstanding exists not only on the part of NLM, but bloggers as well.
The point is this: All these excess categories of websites, "homepages", blogs, wikis, etc, are unnecessary.
Everything with a permalink can be cited in the same way, and the needed components are: Posting Name or pseudonym of author, title of post, date of publication of post, and permalink.
That's what you need, and nothing else. It doesn't matter where the post is found, who is hosting it, or when or where you read it.
Wikis are a special case, because they actually DO have revision history, so you should cite the direct link to the entry, but also include the link to the diff of the version you're citing and the current version.
If the author doesn't understand what I am talking about regarding a diff, they've got no business at all citing a wiki in the first place.
Sorry for the heated rhetoric, but this is a simple issue for some of us, and I just can't believe how badly misunderstood the majority of people seem to be.
However, I feel Mr. Gunn oversimplifies.
If I wanted to cite the comment that Mr. Gunn left on this blog entry, I would need a format that differs slightly from the way I would cite Scott's entry. While giving each comment its own HTML anchor tag is a good idea, most blogs aren't set up that way, and few comments have titles, so in the space where the page title would go you'd have to kludge it by saying something like "[Untitled comment left on "(Title of Blog Entry)"]". In this case, a one-size-fits all format might erroneously give the impression that Scott is the author of all the comments posted to his site, or that Mr. Gunn was the author of the blog entry.
We'll never nail this down completely, since people will keep coming up with new ways to present information. How do we cite a location in Second Life? How we cite a conversation that two NPCs have during one possible branch of the storyline in Deus Ex 2?