Web archives do not capture every resource on every page that they attempt to archive. This results in archived pages missing a portion of their embedded resources. These embedded resources have varying historic, utility, and importance values. The proportion of missing embedded resources does not provide an accurate measure of their impact on the Web page; some embedded resources are more important to the utility of a page than others. We propose a method to measure the relative value of embedded resources and assign a damage rating to archived pages as a way to evaluate archival success. In this paper, we show that Web users' perceptions of damage are not accurately estimated by the proportion of missing embedded resources. The proportion of missing embedded resources is a less accurate estimate of resource damage than a random selection. We propose a damage rating algorithm that provides closer alignment to Web user perception, providing an overall improved agreement with users on memento damage by 17% and an improvement by 51% if the mementos are not similarly damaged. We use our algorithm to measure damage in the Internet Archive, showing that it is getting better at mitigating damage over time (going from 0.16 in 1998 to 0.13 in 2013). However, we show that a greater number of important embedded resources (2.05 per memento on average) are missing over time.
Web archives do not always capture every resource on every page that they attempt to archive. This results in archived pages missing a portion of their embedded resources. These embedded resources have varying historic, utility, and importance values. The proportion of missing embedded resources does not provide an accurate measure of their impact on the Web page; some embedded resources are more important to the utility of a page than others. We propose a method to measure the relative value of embedded resources and assign a damage rating to archived pages as a way to evaluate archival success. In this paper, we show that Web users' perceptions of damage are not accurately estimated by the proportion of missing embedded resources. In fact, the proportion of missing embedded resources is a less accurate estimate of resource damage than a random selection. We propose a damage rating algorithm that provides closer alignment to Web user perception, providing an overall improved agreement with users on memento damage by 17 % and an improvement by 51 % if the mementos have a damage rating delta >0.30. We use our algorithm to measure damage in the Internet Archive, showing that it is getting better at mitigating damage over time (going from a damage ). However, we show that a greater number of important embedded resources (2.05 per memento on average) are missing over time. Alternatively, the damage in WebCite is increasing over time (going from 0.375 in 2007 to 0.475 in 2014), while the missing embedded resources remain constant (13 % of the resources are missing on average). Finally, we investigate the impact of JavaScript on the damage of the archives, showing that a crawler that can archive JavaScript-dependent representations will reduce memento damage by 13.5 %.
Abstract. As web technologies evolve, web archivists work to keep up so that our digital history is preserved. Recent advances in web technologies have introduced client-side executed scripts that load data without a referential identifier or that require user interaction (e.g., content loading when the page has scrolled). These advances have made automating methods for capturing web pages more difficult. Because of the evolving schemes of publishing web pages along with the progressive capability of web preservation tools, the archivability of pages on the web has varied over time. In this paper we show that the archivability of a web page can be deduced from the type of page being archived, which aligns with that page's accessibility in respect to dynamic content. We show concrete examples of when these technologies were introduced by referencing mementos of pages that have persisted through a long evolution of available technologies. Identifying these reasons for the inability of these web pages to be archived in the past in respect to accessibility serves as a guide for ensuring that content that has longevity is published using good practice methods that make it available for preservation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.