Case Study – Home page history « Guide to Preservation of Web Resources

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Scenario: Your institution is about to commemorate an important event and the Vice Chancellor wants to highlight that the Institution is actively engaging with new technologies, and so would like to provide an example of how the Institutions website has developed since it was launched.

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Issues

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How has your Institutional home page changed over time?
Have you kept records of the changes and the decisions which were made (and how they were made)?
If you needed to do this for your Institution, do you feel you would be able to deliver a solution? How far back could you go?

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Approaches

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<blockquote cite='http://jiscpowrguide.jiscpress.org/case-study-%e2%80%93-home-page-history/#5'><ul>
<li>The Internet Archive (see   Chapter 7) has taken snapshots of websites since 1996 and may have captured   web pages from your Institution. The University of Bath   used the snapshots of its home page captured by Internet Archive to   illustrate how it had changed between 1997 and 2007: an animated   visualisation of the changes, linking to the IAs snapshots, is available on   UKOLNs website. However, there is no guarantee that the Internet Archive   will have captured every iteration of your Institutions website, nor that   the copies it has are complete and fully functional.</li>
<li>Even if there are few, or no,   surviving copies of previous versions of your website, there is no time like   the present to start making sure snapshots are kept, either by taking your   own copies, or ensuring the Internet Archive takes a copy. You can use an   online form to nominate a site for crawling by the Internet Archive. It is   also possible to nominate your site for capture by the UK Web Archive (see   Chapter 7).</li>
<li>Another approach is to build   a compiled online history. The University    of Virginia maintains a   web page detailing 14 years of its website history. It includes fascinating   statistical information based on analysis of the web server logs. Copies of   the website are not available before 1996 and the image of the website in   1996 is taken from the Internet Archive. All subsequent snapshots are hosted   on the main U.Va website, in subdirectories (/virginia1999, etc.). Some years   are missing: whether because the changes were insignificant, or no copy   survives, is not clear. Although there are broken links in the archived   sites, or there are anachronistic links to current versions of pages, the   archived snapshots provide a valuable view of the evolution of the   Institutions web presence.</li>
</ul></blockquote>

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The Internet Archive (see Chapter 7) has taken snapshots of websites since 1996 and may have captured web pages from your Institution. The University of Bath used the snapshots of its home page captured by Internet Archive to illustrate how it had changed between 1997 and 2007: an animated visualisation of the changes, linking to the IAs snapshots, is available on UKOLNs website. However, there is no guarantee that the Internet Archive will have captured every iteration of your Institutions website, nor that the copies it has are complete and fully functional.
Even if there are few, or no, surviving copies of previous versions of your website, there is no time like the present to start making sure snapshots are kept, either by taking your own copies, or ensuring the Internet Archive takes a copy. You can use an online form to nominate a site for crawling by the Internet Archive. It is also possible to nominate your site for capture by the UK Web Archive (see Chapter 7).
Another approach is to build a compiled online history. The University of Virginia maintains a web page detailing 14 years of its website history. It includes fascinating statistical information based on analysis of the web server logs. Copies of the website are not available before 1996 and the image of the website in 1996 is taken from the Internet Archive. All subsequent snapshots are hosted on the main U.Va website, in subdirectories (/virginia1999, etc.). Some years are missing: whether because the changes were insignificant, or no copy survives, is not clear. Although there are broken links in the archived sites, or there are anachronistic links to current versions of pages, the archived snapshots provide a valuable view of the evolution of the Institutions web presence.