Error 404: or, what is the shelf-life of printed Internet guides?

Kitchens, Joel; Mosley, Pixey Anne

doi:10.1016/s1464-9055(00)00178-0

Cited by 9 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…However, the Web is not a true library, and problems of the persistence of links have been reported in the literature, leading some researchers to question the usefulness of Web citations in scholarly literature (Germain, 2000) and popular literature such as printed Internet guides (Kitchens & Mosley, 2000). For example, Harter and Kim (1996) analyzed approximately 200 e‐journals and found that very few articles cited other online articles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Link decay in leading information science journals

Goh

2006

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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Web citations have become common in scholarly publications as the amount of online literature increases. Yet, such links are not persistent and many decay over time, causing accessibility problems for readers. The present study investigates the link decay phenomenon in three leading information science journals. Articles spanning a period of 7 years (1997-2003) were downloaded, and their links were extracted. From these, a measure of link decay, the half-life, was computed to be approximately 5 years, which compares favorably against other disciplines (1.4-4.8 years). The study also investigated types of link accessibility errors encountered as well as examined characteristics of links that may be associated with decay. It was found that approximately 31% of all citations were not accessible during the time of testing, and the majority of errors were due to missing content (HTTP Error Code 404). Citations from the edu domain were also found to have the highest failure rates of 36% when compared with other popular top-level domains. Results indicate that link decay is a problem that cannot be ignored, and implications for journal authors and readers are discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Link decay in leading information science journals

Goh

2006

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

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“…Although once this report existed at several places on the Web, it is no longer to be found. Kitchens and Mosley (2000) question the utility of printed Internet guides because the Web references are far too ephemeral. Taylor and Hudson (2000) explore printed biographies of URLs and Web lists.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Web page change and persistence—A four‐year longitudinal study

Koehler

2001

J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.

169

119

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Changes in the topography of the Web can be expressed in at least four ways: (1) more sites on more servers in more places, (2) more pages and objects added to existing sites and pages, (3) changes in traffic, and (4) modifications to existing text, graphic, and other Web objects. This article does not address the first three factors (more sites, more pages, more traffic) in the growth of the Web. It focuses instead on changes to an existing set of Web documents. The article documents changes to an aging set of Web pages, first identified and "collected" in December 1996 and followed weekly thereafter. Results are reported through February 2001. The article addresses two related phenomena: (1) the life cycle of Web objects, and (2) changes to Web objects. These data reaffirm that the half-life of a Web page is approximately 2years. There is variation among Web pages by top-level domain and by page type (navigation, content). Web page content appears to stabilize over time; aging pages change less often than once they did.

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“…(2003, p. 70). Similar results and statistics are based on reviews of citations from print academic journal articles (Germain, 2000;Casserly and Bird, 2003;Dellavalle et al, 2003;Bugeja and Dimitrova, 2005b), from conference proceedings (Bugeja and Dimitrova, 2005a), from online resources (Matthews and Owings, 1999;Lawrence et al, 2001;Entlich, 2002;Sellitto, 2005), and from printed Web guides and "webliographies" (Kitchens and Mosley, 2000;Taylor and Hudson, 2000;Tyler and McNeil, 2003). Wallace Koehler's longitudinal studies (1999aKoehler's longitudinal studies ( ,b, 2002 on web page and Web site permanence found similar results.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Rotten But Not Forgotten

Strader¹,

Hamill²

2007

The Serials Librarian

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In late 2002 and early 2003, the Serials and ElectronicResources Department of The Ohio State University Libraries collected for correction a total of 864 nonfunctional URLs in bibliographic records for electronic resources on subscription. This paper identifies the types of errors found and reports the proportion of success versus failure to correct the URLs and restore access to the affected titles. Of the URLs examined, 54% were from .gov websites, with the remainder evenly distributed between .edu, .org, .com, and other websites. The high proportion of nonfunctional government (.gov) URLs may be due to the period of collections and might have been affected by the September 11, 2001 attack. Overall, 15% of the affected URLs ultimately did not require changes; 70% required some type of correction; and 14% could not C. Rockelle Strader, formerly Electronic Resources Manager, is currently Assistant Professor and Catalog Librarian,

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Error 404: or, what is the shelf-life of printed Internet guides?

Cited by 9 publications

References 2 publications

Link decay in leading information science journals

Link decay in leading information science journals

Web page change and persistence—A four‐year longitudinal study

Rotten But Not Forgotten

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