The Columbia guide to online style /

Walker and Taylor's desperately needed supplement to current style manuals is an excellent postscript to Walker's ACW Style Sheet . The current APA, MLA, and Chicago manuals are far from comprehensive, and most students find them inadequate for the plethora of information types on the Internet. Part 1, "Citation," covers many kinds of sites--Web sites, gophers, ftp sites, newsgroups, chat sessions, discussion lists, databases, images, and audio and video files. The guide's best feature is the number of examples it provides in both humanities and scientific formats, easily surpassing other style manuals. Practical examples are what most students and faculty want to see. Part 2, "Production," which covers design of online resources, is extensive and detailed and helps guide publishers of electronic information. Updates to the guide will be available online at Columbia University Press . The glossary and index are excellent. Essential for any library collection. L. Windsor; Ohio University

In the last five years new editions of the standard manuals of style and citation have appeared (e.g., The Chicago Manual of Style, Univ. of Chicago, 1993; Modern Language Association Handbook for Writers, MLA, 1994), which writers, publishers, librarians, and academics hoped would give authoritative answers to the troublesome questions posed by electronic media. But none of these guides adequately addressed the crucial changes brought on by the World Wide Web. In 1994, Walker (English, Univ. of South Florida) developed a simple and effective style sheet for citing online resources and posted it on the web. The style was quickly endorsed by the Alliance for Computers and Writing, and her guidelines have been adopted by numerous online journals. Now Walker and Taylor (English, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) have produced a comprehensive manual that not only covers citation of online documents but provides guidelines for producing them. Part 1 presents an adaptable "citation template" with numerous helpful examples in both a humanities style, based on Modern Language Association form, and a scientific style much like that of the American Psychological Association. Part 2 gives a theoretical rationale for document style and describes standards for producing online documents. While the guidelines in this book are not likely to change dramatically, any changes will be made available free of charge at the publisher's web site, . With its index and annotated glossary, this guide is an excellent supplement to the standard style manuals.‘Paul A. D'Alessandro, Portland P.L., ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.