Internet Referencing

There are various reasons why an author's name is not given, each requires a different approach

1. The document is presented as a corporate statement by an organization (the 'official line', as it were, rather than an individual point of view or paper). In this case, you will give the organization as the 'author'.

RAD (n.d.) Membership Services. [online] London: Royal Academy of Dance [last accessed 10/11/01] Available at http://www.rad.org.uk/member_services/memb_serv.html

2. The document, or part of it, is has clearly been written by someone, and represents an individual, rather than corporate point of view, but the author's name is missing. This is a case for using 'Anon'.
   See (3) below for an example.
   
   
3. The document contains vital information, but the information is either considered to be in the public domain (the words of a folk-song, for example, or the steps of a dance) or simply unattributed. In this case, whether you use the title of the page in the author field, or Anon, or the organisation in the author field is a fairly open question.

How you reference the following example will depend on whether you consider the Bigamy Two-Step to be a phenomenon in the public domain which the BATD offer to the world through their website, the work of an anonymous choreographer, or the property of the BATD itself. What this highlights is not that Internet referencing is difficult, but that you may need to do some more research - like ringing up the BATD, for example - before you come to a conclusion.

The Bigamy Two-Step (n.d.)[online] Glasgow, Scotland: The British Association of Dance Teachers [Last accessed 10/11/01] Available at: http://www.batd.co.uk/pages/dances/BIGAMYTWOSTEP.htm

Anon (n.d.) The Bigamy Two-Step. [online] Glasgow, Scotland: The British Assocation of Dance Teachers Last accessed 10/11/01] Available at: http://www.batd.co.uk/pages/dances/BIGAMYTWOSTEP.htm

The British Assocation of Dance Teachers (n.d.) The Bigamy Two-Step. [online] Glasgow, Scotland: BATD [Last accessed 10/11/01]. Available at: http://www.batd.co.uk/pages/dances/BIGAMYTWOSTEP.htm

4. The website is not easily classifiable as a 'document' - a personal homepage, for example. In this case, you would give the name of the website in italic script at the beginning of the reference, followed by as much information as you have.

Bhavdip Amin's Website (n.d.) [online] [last accessed 7th August 2001]. Available at: http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~dd273/

5. The website is an online database (such as a theatre listings site, or library catalogue for example). Authorship is not an issue in this case, but ownership is. See separate page on online databases.

Always try to find an author - after all, words do not write themselves, and in referencing, the more accurate the attribution the better. Here are some tips:

• Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and look for a name, or a copyright notice
• If there are links to other pages in the same site, use them to see if the author is named elsewhere.
• If there are no links, cut off the end of the address in the 'address bar' to view the homepage. See the Internet Tips Page on 'systematic truncation' to learn how to do this.
• If the difficulty throws up questions of attribution, then consider further research - a phone call, an email, a letter.

When you don't have an author, a title will often do. But what if you have No Title?