New: "2011 Report on Link Rot"

From a Free Government Information Blog Post by J,A, Jacobs:
How reliable are those URLs in your OPAC? The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive which harvests and preserves relevant digital information from the web, has been producing reports on “link rot” for several years. They define link rot as “a URL that no longer provides direct access to files matching the content originally harvested from the URL and currently preserved in the Chesapeake Project’s digital archive.”
Their new report is now available:

• Breaking Down Link Rot: The Chesapeake Project Legal Information Archive’s Examination of URL Stability, By Sarah Rhodes, LLRX (March 1, 2011).

This study is particularly relevant to government information specialists because more than 90% of their sample URLs were from state governments (state.[state code].us), organizations (.org), and government (.gov) the top-level domains.
Their data show that link rot frequency for .gov files was 10% in 2008, 13% in 2009, and 25% in 2010. State-level URL link rot was even worse: 10.8% in 2008, 15.8% in 2009, and 32.1% in 2010.
Read the Complete Blog Post
See Also: “‘Link Rot” and Legal Resources on the Web: A 2010 Analysis by the Chesapeake Project'”
See Also: More Info at Legalinfoarchive.org
URL also provides access to archive.

Filed under: Associations and Organizations, Data Files, Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, Reports, Resources