On the Web, Research Work Proves Ephemeral

This Slashdot Thread, points the way to A Washington Post Article on archinving the web. In research described in the journal Science last month, the team looked at footnotes from scientific articles in three major journals — the New England Journal of Medicine, Science and Nature — at three months, 15 months and 27 months after publication. The prevalence of inactive Internet references grew during those intervals from 3.8 percent to 10 percent to 13 percent.

“I think of it like the library burning in Alexandria,” Dellavalle said, referring to the 48 B.C. sacking of the ancient world’s greatest repository of knowledge. “We’ve had all these hundreds of years of stuff available by interlibrary loan, but now things just a few years old are disappearing right under our noses really quickly.”


Good Comments from Slashdot, including what could be the best argument for keeping a library on campus:

Hey, guys. See that big building with those obsolete books? Lots of chicks hang out there. 🙂