Digital archives meant to be permanent seem to be lost on the web

By Chris Stokel-Walker

The internet can be an ephemeral place, which is problematic for digital web archives designed to permanently preserve the content of web pages. Such archives are themselves at risk of losing information, according to an analysis of library and public records web pages.

This is because some of these pages alter their fixed location on the internet, known as a base uniform resource identifier (URI), and there is no automated way to find the new URI. This could be due to organisational changes, lack …