[Air-L] Citing inactive websites

[Denise N. Rall]

I believe Steve Jones is quoted in this article that appeared back in 2005:

Carlson, S. (2005). "Scholars note 'decay' of citations to online references." The Chronicle of Higher Education 51(28): A.30.

Below are my notes from the article:

"After analyzing more than 1,126 citations that made references to Web address, taken from online verisons of five prestigious communication-studies journals, 373 of the links, or 33 percent, were found to be dead.  Of the 753 links that worked, only 424 pointed to information pertinent to the citation" (Bugela and Dimitrova, cited in Carlson 2005).

"Anthony T. Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton University who has written a book about footnotes, has read a draft of the study and agrees that 'citation decay is a 'real problem'. "I'm looking at a world in which documentation and verification melt into air," he says. He sees this problem growing, as today's students rely more on online sources. (personal communication).

As you note, link rot or decay is a real problem. There is a body of scholarship referring to the problem of irretrievable data in the webmetrics community. I refer you to work from Mike Thelwall and colleagues at the University of Wolverhampton, and Paul Wouters and colleagues at the Virtual Knowledge Studio, the Netherlands (cf. the notion of 'internet time' where links come and go.

From a few years of watching "Time Team" a UK production that focuses on recovering past archeological finds, as well as advice given from a forensic anthropologist working on the so-called Hobbit of Flores, Indonesia, for longevity, carve it in stone.

Cheers, Denise

Dr Denise N. Rall, Research Assistant, School of Health & Human Sciences
Exhibitor, Art in Chemistry, NeXT Gallery, Magellan St., Lismore, 
Opening Thursday 18 August 18 5-7 PM, On display 8-26 August, 2011
Lismore NSW AUSTRALIA Mobile +(61)(0)438 233344 Fax +(61)(0)2 6624 5380
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/drall/


--- On Thu, 25/8/11, Debbie McCormick <seekersbrain at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Debbie McCormick <seekersbrain at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Air-L] Citing inactive websites
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Received: Thursday, 25 August, 2011, 12:57 PM
> Thanks for the replies.
> 
> William - yes. Zotero is great I use it now for most web
> docs that I need a
> snapshot of, but unfortunately no use for my current
> dilemma.
> Mark - I've been able to get some off the Wayback Machine
> but not all.
> Alejandro - yes, I have the original date and that was what
> I included but
> the editors are questioning that since the sites no longer
> exist they are
> saying that date is irrelevant.
> 
> Any other ideas? This is going to be an issue that will be
> faced by many of
> us in the not too distant future.  The various style
> guides don't offer much
> advice but I have seen various conversations about the
> issue and it even has
> a name - linkrot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot).
> 
> Cheers
> Debbie
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