Using the internet to acquire resources is de rigueur, nowadays. It's worth knowing about one or two tips I've hoovered up over the years in order to make your resources look the biz.
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Any material you acquire, from anywhere, should be credited. Imagine how you'd feel if you found your work being used by someone else without crediting all the hard work you've put in.
If you can find an author, use his or her name. Otherwise, use the company
name.
Atherton, J. S. (2003). Doceo: Competence, Proficiency and
beyond. Available at: http://www.doceo.co.uk/background/expertise.htm
(Accessed 14th April, 2008).
If you can find a date, refer to that, too. Otherwise, write 'undated', or
'no date'.
Incisive.nu (undated). Hit
List: Leverage. Available at: http://www.incisive.nu/articles. (Accessed
23rd March, 2008).
If you are citing it in a bibliography, quote the full URL with a note of the
date you accessed it.
BBC Skillswise website: located at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/ (Last accessed 9th December, 2007).
A cautionary tale: A friend of mine is a professional photographer and market researcher for hi-tech products. Once, he discovered a seller on eBay had linked a sale to a photo of his on his own website. After emailing the seller to ask for credit, and getting none, my friend promptly removed the image and replaced it with text saying that the eBay seller was dodgy and shouldn't be trusted. I have also heard of people launching DoS attacks to prevent people from being able to access a site until their work was credited or removed.
Usually, just printing out from a website is fine - you'll get the date you printed it out, and the full URL, so you've effectively credited it properly. (See the printing options, below, if you're not sure how to do this.)
If you just want to grab a few words or paragraphs, it can be really irritating copying from the web. Sometimes you'll need to present the text without extra bits, for instance adverts, or in a larger font for accessibility. Often, when you copy it over into Word, you'll get lots of frustrating or weird formatting that's impossible to remove, or it will copy over the table format or loads of small images which take forever to remove manually.
In this case, here's what you can do. Copy the text as normal. Open Notepad (Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Notepad) and paste in there. Notepad is a 'text editor', without any formatting options whatsoever - no bold, no underline, no bullets, colours or graphics. Copy this, and then paste into Word. Once you get the hang of it, it's so quick. When I'm in Notepad, I use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+V, +A, +C and over to Word.
Sometimes you browse through your bookmarks and discover 'dead' links - webpages that have been taken down or moved and basically no longer exist. If you think you'll ever need a page ever again, you can download extra programs which can store them for you offline.
For Internet Explorer users, I recommend HTTrack's software - free, easy to use and quick to get going. It downloads your chosen URL with all links, so you can browse offline. It retains all original link structure and images. You create a 'project' (such as 'BBC's Bach Pages'), choose which pages to download or 'mirror', and away you go. You can find out the date you downloaded it (which is great for referencing in bibliographies).
For Mozilla Firefox users, I love the ScrapBook Add-on. This is very much the same as HTTrack, but you can also view your captured pages in a sidebar, organise them in folders much like your bookmarks, and even edit them by deleting bits, writing notes and highlighting text. Downloaded pages are also dated (if you look in the Properties) and you can choose how many levels of sub-links to go for. Very flexible.
For Opera users, there is apparently a ScrapBook-type plugin called OBook, which I have not tried, so don't blame me if it all goes wibbly. ;-)
Some web addresses are hopelessly long. In order to make them more user-friendly - especially when it comes to quoting them in the middle of an article - consider using one of the free services to make long web addresses shorter.
The one I prefer is tinyurl. When you create a 'tinyurl', it will automatically place the new shorter link onto your clipboard, so you can go to your document or email and paste it straight in. There is a Mozilla Firefox Add-on that will add 'TinyURL Maker' to your toolbar, which is dead handy.
Metamark you have to register, but you can place a bookmarklet on your toolbar for quick access.
Tube URL much the same as TinyURL but you can choose your own link name.
Path To also allows you to choose your own link name.
Before printing anything, I always recommend doing a 'Print Preview', regardless of what program you're in. You'll save a load of paper and ink that way!
You can then see if any printing will be going onto two pages. If so, you have a choice:
In Internet Explorer, header/footer info is a pain in the neck. You'll have to enter code to tell it what you want to display. To find a list of these codes, go to Help, and in the Search tab, enter the text change how a Web page looks when it prints.
In Mozilla Firefox, it's much more straightforward - from Page Setup you can choose what information to display in the left, centre or right of the header or the footer. Do note, however, that margins are specified in millimeters, not centimeters, so if you've got your margins set too small the header or footer won't show up!
I can't help but plug Mozilla Firefox here. It's free to download, it's fantastically easy to use, it's highly customisable, and what's more, you can block adverts from appearing on the websites you view. Hurrah and hurroo! Go get it NOW! :-)
The most irritating thing for me, with adverts, is having them jiggle around in your peripheral vision while you're trying to read. I'm sure that could cause problems for epileptics. The other thing is that these adverts and banners take a long time to download, sometimes, and you're sat there waiting for your content while all these ads you're never going to follow download byte by byte for five hours. OK, slight exaggeration, but I like broadband to be quick!
Pop-up blocking has long been available, sometimes via web browsers themselves, and sometimes via anti-virus software. For Firefox, you can download the Add-ons Adblock Plus and Adblock Filterset.G Updater which automatically prevent irritating adverts from displaying.
Please bear in mind that Internet Explorer doesn't have the same kind of plugin ability as Firefox does. If anyone finds an adblocker for IE please let me know!
I have also been told that there exists similar functionality for the Opera browser.
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With many thanks to Andy Cannon for advice and guidance.