A Note on Bibliography

Taking into consideration the rapid growth of Internet studies in recent times, one should note that they do not keep pace with their object – the Internet itself. The speed of fresh ‘updates’ in both the technical and the cultural senses is so high that it seems to be impracticable to put the Internet in academic order before things change, yet again. Thus, today there is neither a strict bibliographic pattern for referencing the Internet resources, nor a stable set of academic concepts to describe the Internet culture. These problems refer to the very nature of the Internet environment, where it is impossible to apply the traditional, ‘paper’ bibliography rules to ‘electronic’ texts, because of such fundamental properties as the volatility of the medium and a lack of linear time. On the one hand, websites can be changed at any time, erased or restored in any new place. On the other hand, the Internet allows a scanned copy of an ancient text to be more accessible than a new publication. Factually, the date of publication becomes almost irrelevant. It is gone, and only the date of last reading still exists. This date of the most recent retrieval of online documents is given in parentheses at the end of each bibliographical entry. Wherever possible, the date of the original publication is also indicated. Additionally, entries made under nicknames or pseudonyms are cited as such. ‘Traditional’ norms of Internet writing, such as the extensive use of small letters, are also preserved. The difficulties of ‘character encoding’ are relevant for the transcription of Russian terms and names. As a rule the Russian GOST standard transliteration is used (with minor changes, e.g. the double “jj” is omitted), with exception only for the authors’ names which are given in their established writings, the reason being, as for one author has put it, “I have used this name spelling extensively; it is a part of my trademark”.