Tuesday, May 29, 2012

"Link Rot" and Legal Resources on the Web: 2012 Analysis

Access to web-published content can be lost as websites are routinely updated, reorganized, or deleted over time. In the five years since the program began, the Chesapeake Group has built a digital archive collection comprising more than 8,600 digital items and 3,700 titles, almost all originally posted to the web but captured and preserved within the group's digital archive.

Every year, the Chesapeake Group investigates whether or not the documents in the archive can still be found at the original web addresses from which they were captured. The group analyzes two samples of web addresses, or URLs, pulled from the archive's records. ...

In 2012, 218 out of 579 URLs in the sample no longer provide access to the content that was originally selected, captured, and archived by the Chesapeake Group. In other words, link rot has increased to 37.7 percent within five years.

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