Robust Linking to Web Resources

Robust Linking to Web Resources

@mart1nkle1n

DtMH 2017, 11/15/2017, San Francisco, CA

Robust Linking to Web Resourceshttp://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/

Martin Klein@mart1nkle1n

Research Library

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Acknowledgements:

Herbert Van de Sompel, LANL

Harihar Shankar, LANL

Michael L. Nelson, ODU

Mark Graham, Internet Archive


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Slide by Herbert Van de Sompel, 2017

A Managed Collection Desires Reliable Outlinks


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Links to another Managed Collection


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Links to Web at Large Resources


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Link Rot


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https://web.archive.org/web/20140101072007/http://netpreserve.org/general-assembly/2013/overview

IIPC

2013


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http://netpreserve.org/general-assembly/2013/overview

IIPC

today


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Content Drift


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https://web.archive.org/web/20161228184110/https://www.epa.gov/climatechange

EPA

12/2016


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https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/signpost/cc.html

EPA

today


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• On the web, all links are subject to reference rot

• Reference rot hinders our ability to follow links as they were

intended when they were put in place

• Link rot: a link stops working all together

• Content drift: The linked content changes over time and

may eventually no longer be representative of the

content that was originally linked

Problem


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http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0115253 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0167475

Reference Rot in Scholarly Communication


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Link Rot in Scholarly Articles


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Link Rot in Scholarly Articles


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Reference Rot Over Time - arXiv


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• On the web, all links are subject to reference rot

• Reference rot hinders our ability to follow links as they were

intended when they were put in place

• Link rot: a link stops working all together

• Content drift: The linked content changes over time and

may eventually no longer be representative of the

content that was originally linked

How can we:

1. Make links more robust?

2. Make them actionable for humans and machines?

Problem


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Robust Links


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Robust Links

1. Create a snapshot of referenced resources in a public web

archive


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Why multiple archives? They aren’t magic web sites!They’re just web sites.

If you used Mummify, you’re now left with a bunch of defunct, shortened links like:

https://mummify.it/XbmcMfE3

Slide by Michael L. Nelson, 2016

https://mummify.it/XbmcMfE3


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Robust Links

1. Create a snapshot of referenced resources in a publically available

web archive

2. Decorate links with:

• URI of archived snapshot

• datetime of archiving

• resource’s original URI


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Link Decoration with Standard HTML

<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20171108053054/http://sfgov.org/"

data-originalurl="http://sfgov.org/"data-versiondate="2017-11-08">

City and County of San Francisco</a>

http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/spec


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Link Decoration via API

http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/api/json/http://web.archive.org/web/20171108053054/http://sfgov.org/

• Submit URI of an archived

snapshot

• Retrieve Robust Links

HTML snippet

• Copy and paste into your

application

http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/api/json/{URI-of-archived-snapshot}


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Robust Links

1. Create a snapshot of referenced resources in a publically available

web archive

2. Decorate links with:

• URI of archived snapshot

• datetime of archiving

• resource’s original URI

Benefits:

• Can visit archived, immutable version of referenced resource

• Original URI & capture datetime allow finding versions in other

web archives

• Uniform, machine-actionable


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Robust Links for Machines

1. JavaScript

2. Browser extensions

a. Memento for Chrome

b. IA Chrome Extension


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Robust Links in Action - JavaScript

http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/november2015-vandesompel


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Robust Links in Action - JavaScript

http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/november2015-vandesompel


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Robust Links in Action – Memento for Chrome

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/memento-time-travel/jgbfpjledahoajcppakbgilmojkaghgm


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Robust Links in Action – Memento for Chrome

http://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/demo/uri_references.html


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Robust Links in Action – IA Chrome Extension

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/wayback-machine/fpnmgdkabkmnadcjpehmlllkndpkmiak


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Take-Aways

• Links on the web are subject to reference rot

• “Robustifying” them (manually or via API calls) can help alleviate the

problem

• Link decorations as proposed by Robust Links are

• based on HTML standards

• machine-actionable

• Organizations such as the Internet Archive, Wikipedia,

News Publishers can help with adoption


@mart1nkle1n


Robust Linking to Web Resourceshttp://robustlinks.mementoweb.org/

Martin Klein@mart1nkle1n

Research Library

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Acknowledgements:

Herbert Van de Sompel, LANL

Harihar Shankar, LANL

Michael L. Nelson, ODU

Mark Graham, Internet Archive