On the Web, Research Work Proves Ephemeral

From On the Web, Research Work Proves Ephemeral on the fluidity of URLs and their movement, displacement, and disappearance:
(thanks to slashdot for this reference)

"Problem was, it took about two years for the article to wind its way to publication. And by that time, many of the sites they had cited had moved to other locations on the Internet or disappeared altogether, rendering useless all those Web addresses -- also known as uniform resource locators (URLs) -- they had provided in their footnotes."

I think the problem was perhaps with reliance on those URLs knowing that they can not be relied for an extended period of time.

"Dellavalle's concerns reflect those of a growing number of scientists and scholars who are nervous about their increasing reliance on a medium that is proving far more ephemeral than archival."

It isn't the medium; it is the not so rigorous self discipline of individuals who put serious and valuable scholarly material on websites that are not maintained.

This is why 'permalinks' used by bloggers are so great.

Further, I would like to stress that the problem is not with the internet as a publishing medium, rather with the publishing strategies followed by self publishers. Self archiving could effectively resolve this problem. Or, even better, a publishing framework like MIT's and HP's DSpace that cares tremendously about preservation and permanency of locations. Another such digital library system that can be used to preserve publications and URLs is Greenstone.