Not long ago the chronic refrain of Internet users -- "I found that somewhere; now where is it?" -- bounced from node to node. But as search engines become more sophisticated and users become more adept at recording their discovered treasures in bookmark and hotlist files full of URLs, a new mantra has begun to fill the Net -- "Now that I've got it, how do I cite it?"

Clearly, the two questions are related and provide important insights into the nature of the organization, access, maintenance and preservation of Net-based information. The problem is not confined merely to multiple media and formats, but to multiple (mirror) sites, raising the thorny question of which site has the desired (not necessarily most recent) version of a given e-document (used throughout to mean any digital representation of information regardless of form or format). In short, intellectual control of Internet documents has lagged far behind the adept user's ability to find information. Intellectual control (what ink-on-paper users call "bibliographic control") creates the organizational tools that enables the adept and not so adept user to replicate assuredly past internet voyages and, by a similar process and approach, to successfully satisfy new information needs and queries.

Once found, it is often necessary to "tell someone else" about the source of the information. Over the years scholars in a variety of disciplines have created elaborate -- and differing -- systems for "telling someone" about a given information source. These systems are termed reference and citation styles. As more and more information becomes available on the Net (often without an ink-on-paper equivalent), the need for clear, systematic and useful expressions to "tell someone else" has become apparent -- and urgent. Unfortunately, the confusion caused by multiple disciplinary styles is magnified by varying technological formats and forums present on the Net (e.g., text, graphics, audio, archived files, program-specific, email, newsgroups, listservs, webpages, and the like).

Although several sources have suggested solutions, there is no one, good answer. Other links on this page take the reader to those suggestions as well as to more detailed investigations of the problem. For now, however, the question of how to cite e-documents remains, in the words of the fabled King of Siam, "a puzzlement."