[ih] Link rot (was: Museum archiving (was: Re: IENs))

[John Day]

Couldn’t agree more.  A URL as a citation is practically useless. The Internet is not much of an archive.

> On May 8, 2021, at 16:17, Brian E Carpenter <brian.e.carpenter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 09-May-21 02:44, Ole Jacobsen via Internet-history wrote:
> ...
>> I'll just note that there used to be a direct URL for ConneXions in the CBI
>> hosted publications archive, but that has recently changed. Another peril
>> of online museums. 
> 
> Indeed, and I wonder whether this august body could somehow try to change the thinking of archivists about that problem. Just over the last year or so, I've been digging in archives quite a bit (for  doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2020.2990647 and a forthcoming follow-up) and even in that time, some URLs have rotted, which makes it annoying to go back and follow up a new detail, and invalidates published citations. Over the longer term, say 10 years, even more links rot and search results become misleading or useless.
> 
> (Or maybe that's a topic for the SIGCIS list.)
> 
> Regards
>   Brian Carpenter