Herbert Van de Sompel Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS), The Hague, The Netherlands
Source
The Code 4 Library Journal (#50) February 10, 2020
Abstract
Links to web resources frequently break, and linked content can change at unpredictable rates. These dynamics of the Web are detrimental when references to web resources provide evidence or supporting information.
Source: journal.code4lib.org/articles/15509
In this paper, we highlight the significance of reference rot, provide an overview of existing techniques and their characteristics to address it, and introduce our Robust Links approach, including its web service and underlying API. Robustifying links offers a proactive, uniform, and machine-actionable way to combat reference rot. In addition, we discuss our reasoning and approach aimed at keeping the approach functional for the long term. To showcase our approach, we have robustified all links in this article.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
