Have you ever visited a website only to find that a page no longer exist? Well that has happened to me on several occasions.
I found an interesting article that discussed the issues surrounding website archiving. The article was primarily focused on the university level setting and discussed how it is important to preserve websites for future use. The author expressed in great detail reasons as to why archiving websites had many faults. One fault that stood out the most to me was the fact that since archiving is still relatively new it presents problems that print resources don't.
For example, since websites evolve and change day to day or even month to month, there is no guarantee that documents from the website would be preserved forever(Flugstad, 2007). And even though most universities have backup systems in which its sole purpose is to run updates to capture the changes that websites make, they will still fall into many problems because their backup systems are not meant to run for long term purposes. This means that the system will not be able to capture the true metamorphose of a particular site.
SOUND OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!
What are your feelings about archiving websites? Do you think that it should be held in the same respect as archiving print and/or digital resources?
Reference
Flugstad, M.(2007,Fall). Website Archiving: the long-term preservation of local born digital resources. Arkansas Libraries,64(3),5-7.
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6 comments:
It all depends on the website. ALA has some great information on there website, many government websites do also. So, I would say YES, but there needs to be a criteria to go by, not all sites need or should be preserved.
This is a really interesting question, Tamu. I think there is something transient in the very nature of a Website. Most exist to relate the most up-to-date information and aren't concerned much with what happened before. When I teach students how to evaluate the information found on Websites, one of the criteria we look at is the currency of the information; has the site been updated recently?
On the other hand, some information is timeless, perhaps this information falls into the digital preservation category.
The Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org/index.php) is an organization committed to preserving a huge variety of information (text, audio, video, etc.) including Web pages. They even offer a subscription service called Archive-It, whereby organizations can pay to have their Websites archived as often as they want, even daily.
I agree with Richelle & Kate that it depends on the website and on the value of the information. For example, some websites are transient in nature and content, while others contain valuable documentation, historical, or research information that needs to be preserved.
Preservation of digital information is a fairly new issue. It is still being discussed more than it is being enacted. Information scientists and librarians need to raise the bar on this issue. There is so much valuable information that is transitory and not preserved.
I agree with all who said it depends on the Web site. There is undoubtedly some Web site content that must be preserved for legal reasons. There is also value in being able to trace the evolution of ideas over time.
Thank you all for your comments. I agree for the most part that preservation of a website should depend on the website itself. And yes, I agree there should be criteria set for judging its worthiness Richelle.
Thanks for your comments
Tamu
This is why I love archive.org -- it lets you find a deleted web page even when the page is no longer being hosted! (Dug up some interesting dirt on an ex-boyfriend using archive.org. Tsk, tsk, tsk :p)
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