University of Missouri - St. Louis Summer Institute 2002
June 4, 2002, 2:30pm - 4:00pm ; June 12, 2002, 2:30pm - 4:00pm
by Raleigh Muns (muns@umsl.edu)
Web pages are dynamic by nature - they change
Back in the "old days" of the World Wide Web, documents served up to a browser were static documents that did not change. The intent of URLs was to create an "address" for a unique document on the web. The intention was that a user could create durable hypertext links using the URL of a web page. Most users discovered immediately that this was not necessarily so. For example:
<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov">The Clinton Whitehouse</a>
will not take you to the Bill Clinton Whitehouse. Even though the URL in the link above is relatively "static" the document to which it points is not.
Web pages don't always exist forever
If you go to http://www.umsl.edu/~muns/city/ you will find a link to cities listed by the Missouri Department of Economic Development:
Missouri Department of Economic Development Directory of Cities
http://www.ecodev.state.mo.us/mo/city.htm
November 16, 1996
Web pages may be created on the fly with unique URLs which will never exist again ... ever
A number of technologies developed for the World Wide Web involve the creation of web pages "on the fly" with different content every time one access the page. Using such a URL will either cause nothing to come up, or a different page than was originally accessed. For example, here is an online bibliographic citation which will no longer work two weeks after it is first created:
"Struggling Airline Helped by Friendly Giant." The Onion. vol. 38, no. 19
http://www.theonion.com/onion3819/
June 3, 2002. 1:07pm CDT
There are other issues one must take into account when creating an online bibliography. Not all resources are open and accessible to all users. Too often when someone asks for "something on the Internet" what they mean is "something for free." On the Internet DOES NOT MEAN for free. The issue addressed next involves Proprietary vs. Non-Proprietary Resources.
| -> Creating Online Bibliographies HOME | -> Proprietary vs. Non-Proprietary Resources |