At 10:56 AM 9/3/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>(4) The last time it was accessed by a specific url.

#4 is actually the date required in electronic citation guidelines:

***
Stoddard M. AHSL Educational Services -- draft. [web page] Feb 1995;
http://amber.medlib.arizona.edu/homepage.html. [Accessed 16 Mar 1995].
****

This does not mean that the page is up to date. It only gives you a moment
in time when the site or page existed at that address. It qualifies the
address, not the text itself, which may or may not have its own date. Think
of a journal article from the 1950's that is now available digitally; it
has its publication date, which is the original date. The URL has an
accessed date, which is the date that the person citing it last accessed
the article at that URL. While the accessed date may not be needed in some
circumstances, it is definitely useful when the paper was accessed on the
author's own web site rather than an institutional site like JSTOR.
Although it doesn't help you get the article if the URL has changed, it
serves to document (in a kind of academic, gentleman's agreement way) that
the citing author isn't just making it up.

kc


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