How do I cite a document I originally found on the open Internet, but which I can now only find using the Wayback Machine?
The Wayback Machine, also known as the Internet Archive, is a godsend to information seekers and information users. It is a library of Internet pages, an attempt to collect and keep as many Internet pages as possible, before they disappear. Not everything is archived. Some sites will not allow the Internet Archive to access its documents, others have asked for any pages in the archive to be wiped. It did not start collecting until 1996. Searching can be difficult. But if you have an original URL which no longer works, it is worth seeing if there is a copy in the Internet Archive. Citing the archive is just like citing any other URL, even if the URL is long. Note the second “http://” in the URL; this is not a mistake. The part of the address after the second http:// is the original address, while that before it is the Internet Archive’s address, plus date and time details of when the page was “captured”.
