Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [29]
URL: this is the most important field in the entire clip. The URL both gives the reader a way back to the story and identifies the source, if it’s not listed elsewhere. The URL can be copied from where it appears in the Web browser, then pasted above the clip. If there is no usable URL—i.e., the page exists behind a “pay wall” or otherwise may not be accessible, then the publication and date are sufficient.16
Publication: the name of the newspaper or other source. This can be left blank if it’s obvious from the domain in the URL (e.g., nytimes.com).
Date: this refers to the original publication date of the article, not today’s current date or the e-mail’s message-send date.
Title: the title of the article.
Author: the author of the article, if one is listed.
Below these identifying fields should lie the text of the article itself. Be sure to include the entire article, if the piece is spread across multiple Web pages. Some sites, like nytimes.com, have a “Print” or “Single Page” link that puts the entire article text on one page, which makes it easier to select the whole thing at once.
Paper-based clippings can be converted to bits in two ways: either by using a scanner to create an image of the printed clipping, or by finding the article text on the publisher’s website. (Searching Google on the article title, in quotes, often brings up the article page.) Regardless of where clippings originate—in a paper-based source or online—it’s best to store them in bits. Bits don’t take up the physical space that paper clippings do, and they can be backed up, copied, and shared easily. And unlike paper, digital clips never age or deteriorate, as long as there’s a reliable backup.
Once the clip is complete, it’s time to share it or store it. The best way to share a text clipping is to paste it, in clip format, in the body of an e-mail—not as an attachment. Avoid sending a URL alone, since that puts the burden on recipients to find out what the page is, and why they should read it. One benefit of clip format, then, is that it’s empathetic to the recipient.
Consider this example: often when I spot friends mentioned in the news, I e-mail them their article in clip format, so that they can then easily save it and forward it to their colleagues. The URL makes the source plainly visible and allows recipients to check the validity for themselves. If all I did was e-mail them “I saw you in the paper” or “read the story in the business section today,” that would put all the responsibility on them to look up the article, and then find a way to save it or send it to friends. Many users don’t know how to clip or share articles properly; sending them well-formatted clips saves them the trouble of muddling through the process themselves. Sending such an article in clip format shows that you respect the recipient’s time—and that you maintain a good enough media diet to spot them in the news.
Some users prefer not to go to all the trouble of clip format and simply bookmark the URL of the online article, so they can refer to it later. (All Web browsers allow users to store bookmarks, or “favorites,” and there are websites devoted to the same idea: del.icio.us and furl.net are two of the most popular.) But saving only a URL, and not the page contents, poses a risk: you’re relying on an external website to store the clip for you. You have no guarantee that you’ll be able to get back to those bits. A news article may go behind a pay wall after a few days, or the website could crash, or disappear, or change how articles are organized on the server, all of which would make the original article difficult or impossible to find again later. The best way to guarantee that you can access a clip again later is to save it, in clip format if possible, on your own computer.
Chapter 7: Managing Photos
Previous chapters explored how text has been transformed by the bit. E-mails have supplanted paper-based postal mail, digital todo lists have replaced paper checklists, and online news sources have