When a source is cited as a web site, why is a contemporary date listed?
Books and journals, once printed, are static. Web sites are dynamic in that they can and are frequently changed and updated. Content that might be on a web site today, might not be there tomorrow. So, many scholars urge that when a reference to a web site is made, the date of the reference appear also. We have adopted this convention in most cases. We do not with dynamic web sites that are really data bases generating content on the fly such as ours www.politicalquotes.org. Remember however, that a date of publication of a book indicates the date of the publication not the date that it was read. The convention with the web we use is contrary. It indicates the date we read the web site, not the date that it was first published as there is often no way of knowing that since a web site is a dynamic publication, potentially changing at any moment. When a particular piece of a web site was added to the site is almost always unknown.
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