Before citing any on-line source, evaluate it first. To evaluate a source, you must think like a detective. You can begin by using the Who is Who link to find out who supports the web page. Next, you can use that information to investigate the site. This can be done through search engines, or you can do it directly by using phone numbers etc. You should always think about three things with any source: first, what is the reliability of the source; second, what is the depth of detail on your subject that the source goes into; finally, what is the contribution of the source to the field that you are investigating.

http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois This is a great place to start to find out who is behind a web page, or site. They give out a large portion of the domain names.

http://www.google.com/ Use Google to help you in your investigations.

More on Source Evaluation

If you have no luck with Who is Who, you can also try ICANN. They describe themselves: "Created in October 1998 by a broad coalition of the Internet's business, technical, academic, and user communities, ICANN is assuming responsibility for a set of technical functions previously performed under U.S. government contract by IANA and other groups. Specifically, ICANN coordinates the assignment of the following identifiers that must be globally unique for the Internet to function:

(1) Internet domain names

(2) IP address numbers

(3) protocol parameter and port numbers

In addition, ICANN coordinates the stable operation of the Internet's root server system. Their web address is <http://www.icann.org/ >.

For ASA (American Sociological Assoc.), which is very similar to APA, look at the following sites:

http://www.lwc.edu/staff/dpoole/ASAstyleformatintro.html

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_docsocio.html

For Chicago Style (made popular by the Univ. of Chicago), see the following four sites:

http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/WritingCenter/references/sources/chicago/page1.htm

http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/guides/chicagogd.html

http://www.fsu.edu/~library/guides/chicago.html

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/hacker/resdoc/history/sample.htm

For CBE (Council of Biological Editors), look at the following site:

http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/WritingCenter/references/sources/cbe/page1.htm

For MLA (Modern Language Assoc.), see the following three sites. The third site (www.mla.com) is MLA's own site; however, it does not contain all of the information for different types of citations. For the most part, it only covers electronic citations:

http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/WritingCenter/references/sources/mla/page1.htm

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_mla.html

http://www.mla.org/

If you are in a field that uses APA (American Psychological Assoc.), the following sites are excellent sources for citation and style information:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_apa.html

http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/WritingCenter/references/sources/apa/page1.htm

For AAA (American Anthropological Assoc.), this is a style that you don't hear about very often:

http://www.aaanet.org/style_guide.htm

All of the styles can be found on this great site by Cal State University (which also includes Turabian--a simplification of The Chicago Style Manual):

http://www.calstatela.edu/library/styleman.htm