last month one of the online archives I visit regularly was off-line. After it came back on again many hundreds of URL’s that previously had a permalink are gone and lead tot a 404 error.
Untill now I have always, religiously, collected URL’s. And have sometimes used them to check my data. Since I also always download any source I can find I’m wondering now wether to continue recording URL’s. I know we all deal with rotten URL’s from time to time, but this is rediculous. Not to speak of my Wikitree, which is now impacted as well.
So do you still continue to record URL’s? (And perhaps hope permanent might just mean that.)
My personal view is that all URL’s are temporary and transient I never
keep URLS in place of the original source data. There is no such thing
as a perma link the very nature of the internet prevents such a thing
from being.
phil
I always collect both the full citation, and URLs as a shortcut. When the URL becomes obsolete, I still have enough information to get back to the exact page in the exact register I used, and I can update the link until it’s broken again.
You could try contacting the online archives you’re talking about, they might not be aware of the issue. It happened once for a website I often visit. It took a few months for them to fix it, but they were able to recover the old URLs in the end.
Good Idea, Just done that.