But Can You Make Your Way Back?

But Can You Make Your Way Back?

One of the hazards of the web has to be the retracing of steps to locate again that significant information that has just now eluded you.  In the short term the chore is relatively easy.  Over the long term, however, broken URL’s, unsupported sites and web migrations leave the user with a feeling akin to Pooh and Piglet as they follow their own footsteps round and round a spinney in the 100 acre wood.  Confusion and loss.

The dichotomy of scarcity or abundance in the digital archive of the future has been hotly debated.  Though perhaps most recent scholarship sees the cup full, many of the web’s customers have been confounded by the “here today gone tomorrow” vagary of the medium.[1]  Fragility, dependence on ever evolving applications that become obsolete apparently over night, or mere human error, can wipe out whole swathes of data in a heartbeat.  Many have experienced that moment of “here now and oops gone” on their own PC’s and countless hard drives have succumbed to dereliction or lightening strikes.  Virtual after all is, “virtual”.  Therefore, despite predictions of an over abundance of digital records as they proliferate across the world’s computer networks, preserving the content of our digital universe in any kind of order is an ongoing task of apparently monumental proportions. 

What a delight then it is to find the “Way Back Machine” whose purpose is to retrieve sample web sites in their various enhancements over their life spans from a growing Internet Archive.[2]  Indeed the Internet Archive site itself embodies some of the most unique and brilliant features of the digital universe.   Since 1996 an unimaginable 150 billion web pages have been archived and organized for retrieval using the Way Back Machine digital tool.  The searcher can effortlessly pull up the pages in a variety of ways to closely observe change over time.  (I notice that the web site is currently in Beta and I wonder what the new version will bring?)

Subjecting a web site to the “Way Back Machine” is in itself an adventure in digital history as it illustrates not only the history of the evolving organization that is responsible for its contents, but also the history of the Internet itself with its growing levels of sophistication.  

I decided to load up into the machine a history web site called “The Proceedings of the Old Bailey” .  The first of the 324 home pages that have been captured by “Way Back” is dated Feb 13^th 2003 and is a pre-launch start with a simple design in mainly black on an aged  linen paper background.  Although it makes use of some illustration the page is text heavy and similar to a page in a book or magazine, using mostly horizontal space.  Though it is just an announcement of things to come it does establish style elements of the web site for the next four years.  Colors are limited but pleasant on the eye, business is up front and clarity underpins the layout.  Navigation aids are clearly listed in a long left side bar and some major elements such as search tools are repeated in the main body of the page.  A comparison between the first and last version of this home page before it morphed in 2008 reveals little change except the addition of new information such as “Copyright Information and Citation Guide” in the navigation bar, new links to information about the project as it becomes more far reaching and of course the addition of increasing numbers of documents that can be searched.  Historical background information migrates almost unchanged in fact and this continues up to the present 7^th version of the web site.  No need to re-make the wheel after all!

The site’s 5^th version can be viewed for May 9^th, 2008 and reveals a very polished and professional overhaul that endures to this day.  This suggests both the growing variety of options available to web designers and a likely infusion of resources to make it happen.  The baby is not thrown out, however.  Underpinnings of content and familiar devices such as the highlighted, “On This Day In…..” are maintained in the new look.  Even Hogarth’s familiar old wigged barristers are kept in to oversee proceedings, though now it is possible to notice their delinquency and get the humor of the scene (take a look at them at the bottom of home page).  The new home entry page creates a fuller story of the site with its colorful banner underlining the adage that a picture paints a thousand words.  The old linen background has been replaced by basic white, allowing text to be smaller and tighter and creating more definition for the various highlighted boxes of information on the page.  The page now makes more use of vertical space, being divided into three columns and keeping the information in the center for ease of reading and the “business” to the sides.  Navigation aids are listed both along the side as previously and across the top, which seems to have become the new convention for web sites.  Since searching is probably the most important part of the web site for the user this now has its own clearly demarked box which simply distills a search to two options, though other options are available.  Complexities still exist, but are relegated to deeper pages that can be quickly retrieved.

Let’s see……what dreadful thing happened on this day (Sept 11^th) in 1734? 

Mary Eager, Killing

I guess it would be a lot to ask for the URL to be more self explanatory?

---

[1] John Unsworth, dean of University of Illinois’’ Library School, quoted in Digital Age Presents New Problems for Historians http://www.livescience.com/10746-digital-age-presents-problems-historians.html; Roy Rosenzweig, Scarcity or Abundance, Preserving the Past in a Digital Era

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/108.3/rosenzweig.html

[2] It is interesting to see that it has a counterpart created at the New Library of Alexandria in Egypt.  Collaboration is what it’s all about!  http://archive.bibalex.org,