From the journal
How to cite an old inn webpage without confusing its dates
A practical research method for separating an inn webpage, its archive capture and its photographs, with a citation record another reader can check.
An old inn webpage can be useful evidence without being current visitor information. A room description, photograph or contact page belongs to the version you actually found. Before quoting it in a village history or family record, establish which place it describes, when the evidence was captured and what it can reasonably support.
This guide concerns the Manor House Inn on Wraxall Road in Ditcheat. Keep it separate from Ditcheat House or Manor and from similarly named inns elsewhere. This publication is independent of the business; current menus, rooms and bookings belong with the inn's operator.
Define one question first
Choose a question small enough for a webpage to help answer. “What address did this leaflet direct visitors to?” is manageable. “Who owned and operated every version of the inn?” requires several kinds of records and may remain unresolved.
Write the proposed claim before searching. Then make three spaces in your notes: the observation, its source and the limitation. For example, seeing a particular window in a photograph supports a statement about what the image depicts. It does not, without other evidence, date the window's construction or establish when the photograph was taken.
Preserve the address you were given
Copy the whole original URL from the leaflet, article or saved message, including a page path if present. Keep the document's own date separate from the day you opened it. Search results are leads; consult the actual item before citing its contents.
The Guardian's 2 May 2008 inn feature printed manorhouseinn.co.uk for Ditcheat's inn. That is a dated address reference, not proof that today's website is the same business. Record the reference and investigate the relevant period rather than importing a present-day page into the older account.
Treat an archive capture as a particular version
Search a web archive using the original address. If a capture is available, open it and read the archive's date display. Keep the complete archived URL, not just a link to a calendar of possible captures. Check the address and date again after following another link: you may have reached a different capture or the live web.
The Internet Archive explains that some pages and images are missing and that following links can change the date being viewed. A missing photograph therefore does not prove that the original page lacked one. Likewise, a capture found in one year does not show uninterrupted publication throughout that year.
Note precisely what you could inspect: page text, a photograph, its caption or a redirect. If the archive is unavailable when you check, record that limit. Do not replace a failed inspection with an invented description of what the page probably showed.
Separate four dates around a photograph
A photograph can have a date of creation, a date of upload, a webpage publication date and an archive capture date. Add your own consultation date as well. They answer different questions.
Use a photographer's dated record when available and retain its attribution. If no creation date is supplied, describe that date as unknown. An archive banner dates the capture of a resource; it does not automatically date the camera exposure. A filename containing a year is a clue to investigate, not sufficient evidence on its own.
Link to a rights statement for any image you intend to reproduce. Being viewable in an archive does not by itself grant permission to reuse it. A citation can point readers to the source while you separately check whether copying the image is permitted.
Make a citation someone else can follow
The National Archives' guidance distinguishes a page's original publication date, its archive date, its full archived address and the date consulted. Although its worked examples concern the UK Government Web Archive, those separate fields are useful when organising your own research. It does not imply that the inn's website is held in that collection.
Use a record shaped like this, filling only the fields you can establish:
- Page title and named author or organisation, if supplied.
- Original website address and the relevant page path.
- Original publication date, or “not stated”.
- Archive name, capture date and complete capture URL.
- Date you consulted it, the specific observation and any missing material.
For a longer project, the dated evidence-log section of DomainSabre's research workbook is an optional starting format. DomainSabre and this guide share a publisher, Serallo Domains Ltd. The workbook supplies blank fields and a labelled fictional example; it is not an archive, an ownership-history report or evidence about this inn. Use only the research fields relevant to your question and add the actual sources yourself.
Finish by reading your proposed sentence beside the record. Replace “the inn was” with “the captured page described” when that is all the evidence supports. Keep present-day visitor arrangements with the operator and the historical observation with its dated source. The resulting citation should let another reader understand both the finding and its limits.