[Air-l] Using Online Citations to Defunct Web Sites

[jeremy hunsinger]

the choice it seems to me is between maintaining your independent 
archive or relying on existing archives.  I would do the latter, but I 
do know what I use to do the former(because other people have projects 
that I advised them about).  I use the capture facility in adobe acrobat 
4+  it captures the visual image, the links, etc, which you can then 
export the whole site to  postscript.  once it is in a standard language 
like postscript you are very safe for preserving it in the future on 
your own machine.  However, any time that you do save something, it is 
important to also save something that can read it.  

There are for instance huge sections of netart that are very hard to 
access now because they were written in hypercard, there are files 
written in obscure wordprocessors that we will probably never be able to 
access again because most of the knowledge to read it has passed on.  

Bunz, Ulla K wrote:

>Ken Friedman brings up an important, related issue to giving reference to
>online citations (first posted by Ed Lamoureux). What if the website itself
>IS the object of inquiry?
>
>I am just now finishing up research that investigated nine entire websites
>(not pages). I cannot possibly be required to print out every page in these
>sites in case someone wants to look at it 10, 20, 50 years from now, can I? 
>
>As part of my research process and methodology, I downloaded the websites
>using WebCopier, and uploaded them on a local server. I did this more to
>prevent the sites from changing throughout the research process than to save
>them into all eternity. So, theoretically, I could point people to my local
>server address and ask them to look at the sites there (at least until I
>change university affiliation this summer, and who knows whether I'll "pack"
>these digital belongings and take them with me). And the original sites may
>have changed since I downloaded them! By definition, websites are dynamic
>documents. A screen shot or printout is just a momentary, Polaroid-like
>memorabilia. And in a way, so are my downloaded sites.
>
>If quoting text or a paragraph from an online document, I would strongly
>support Joe Walther's viewpoint (paraphrased) - to provide up-to-date
>specific reference, if at all possible. But if we're talking about whole
>pages or sites - I honestly don't know. 
>
>Once I figure it out, I'll write a book and make big bucks from it ;) 
>ulla
>*************************
>Ulla K. Bunz
>University of Kansas
>102 Bailey
>Lawrence, KS 66045
>785-864-1160
>ulla at ukans.edu
>*************************
>
> -----Original Message-----
>From: 	jeremy hunsinger [] 
>Subject:	Re: [Air-l] Using Online Citations to Defunct Web Sites
>
>Ken Friedman wrote:
>
>>When the Web site itself is the object of inquiry, I print out
>>images of the relevant pages. 
>>
>
>while this is a tactic that one can use, I think it really is a waste of 
>resources to a great extent.  I do not support the effort of making 
>personal copies of everything on the web that people use or cite. 
> Memory is cheap, that is true, effort is not, parsing data and 
>knowledge is not, etc.  I'd much prefer to rely on large archives, and 
>if something disappears, as things do, books disappear and so do 
>articles, they get lost, they will either reappear eventually somewhere 
>or they will be traces of what was.  [snip]
>
>
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jeremy hunsinger		http://www.cddc.vt.edu/jeremy
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