The Future of Academic Style: Why Citations Still Matter in the Age of Google
The Future of Academic Style: Why Citations Still Matter in the Age of Google, in Los Angeles Review of Books, by Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Excerpt:
“If anything, the reference system provided by a good citation style has come to matter even more in the age of the internet, rather than being rendered obsolete by the seemingly infinite networking and searchability of texts and other cultural resources online. Things migrate with great fluidity these days: that article might still be associated with the journal in which it was published, but it’s very likely been found through an online journal aggregator like JSTOR, and that might make a difference to a future researcher trying to track down a source. A book might be consulted not in print but through Google Books, and knowing that might provide information about anomalies in the source. A television episode watched through a streaming service like Netflix might have features that the originally aired version did not. And so on: publications and other cultural objects are no longer quite as fixed in format as they were, and their very malleability may heighten the importance for future scholars of knowing precisely which version today’s researcher consulted.”