So, instead of linking to American Memory, mirror it locally?
Of all the things libraries shouldn't be getting into—mirroring
others' sites? The legal issues alone should give you hives. Besides,
as time goes by and sites are increasingly dynamic, mirroring stops
working. You can't "mirror" Facebook—or LibraryThing.
If it really bothers you, why not link to an Internet Archive mirror
of the page?
You can actually do both. I used to run a series of web directories.
Every week I ran a check script to make sure the pages were still
there. If they were, the URL was changed to a IA Wayback Machine URL.
The only trick is detecting all page failures. Only some produce a
404, so it's useful to have a more intelligent algorithm.
Tim
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 11:50 AM, Eric Lease Morgan <emorgan_at_nd.edu> wrote:
> On Jul 29, 2008, at 11:38 AM, Bruce Brigell wrote:
>
>> While my library does catalog selected websites, keeping the links
>> up-to-date is a real headache.
>
>
> I concur. Keeping up with links is a real pain.
>
> In our traditional/physical library world, the links were call numbers --
> "Mark it and park it." In our Webbed world that is not so easy. For this
> reason, and for the sake of long-term preservation, I advocate creating
> copies (mirroring) of remote resources, giving them local,
> library-controlled URLs, and supplementing a library catalog with both
> original/canonical URLs as well as local/just-in-case-backup URLs. "Lot's of
> copies keep stuff safe." This too can get out of hand, and this is why I
> also advocate articulating a collection policy outlining when things are
> mirrored and when things are just linked.
>
> --
> Eric Lease Morgan
> Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
> University of Notre Dame
>
> (574) 631-8604
>
--
Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding
Received on Tue Jul 29 2008 - 10:27:17 EDT