Skip to main content

Legal link rot

By








It has happened to all of us: you're reading an article and happen upon a footnote that looks intriguing. You click on the link, and boom, 404 error.


Last year, the Harvard Law Review Forum published 'Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations: How to Make Legal Scholarship More Permanent, which offers a solution for the broken links that litter legal scholarship over time.

They found: "Of our spot-checked sample, only 29.9% of the HRJ links, 26.8% of the HLR links, and 34.2% of the JOLT links contained the material cited due to link or reference rot."

The article therefore pitches the idea of Perma:

"...a platform that will allow authors and editors to automatically generate, store, and reference — in a freely and publicly accessible manner — archived data representing the relevant information of a cited online resource. A freely accessible web database of cited materials will not only allow for the owners of websites to no longer worry about maintaining cited links, it will create better references and more easily verified scholarship."

You can sign up for a free account with Perma and check it out. Basically, the services archives the item that you wish to cite and creates a perpetual URL that will lead future would-be readers back to the material. I'm not sure if there are copyright implications with the service; perhaps that remains to be seen. But for now, it looks like a fantastic idea, and one that libraries are involved in supporting.

References

Jill Lepore, 'Can the Internet be Archived?', The New Yorker, 26 January 2015. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/26/cobweb

Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert and Lawrence Lessig, 'Perma: Scoping and Addressing the Problem of Link and Reference Rot in Legal Citations: How to Make Legal Scholarship More Permanent', (2014) 27 Harvard Law Review F. 176

ALLA(WA) Committee Secretary - Megan Fitzgibbons. 
Librarian, University of Western Australia.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ALLA National Board - Nominations Open

By
ALLA members would have received an email from Emma Joneshart, President of ALLA Ltd regarding a call for nominations for members to join the ALLA Ltd Board of Directors. Nominations will be voted upon at the ALLA AGM, held on Thursday 23 September during the ALLA Virtual Conference 2021 . The ALLA Ltd Board of Directors is an important part of the Australian Law Librarians' Association's governance. Made up of at least eight members of ALLA, nominations are open for the following positions:  Vice President Secretary Treasurer Vendor Relations CPD Coordinator General Directors The Vice President position is for a term of 3 years, consisting of a year each as Vice President, President and Past President. The other positions are for a 2-year term, allowing for a sufficient time period to become familiar with the role and have meaningful impact on ALLA projects.  Each role is varied, with support from other members of the Board, and in addition to monthly meetings (mainly via te...
Post a Comment
Read more

ALLA Conference 2018 - Call for Papers

By
Submissions are now open for the 2018 ALLA Conference!   The 2018 Conference will be held in Darwin, Northern Territory at the Doubletree by Hilton Esplanade and there will opportunities to visit law libraries and enjoy the array of culinary and cultural highlights of Darwin. Centred around the theme of Global Impact/Local Footprint, the Conference Committee is looking for papers and posters, including but not limited to those that address the themes: Indigenous issues Career development Technology Education Presentations There will be a variety of presentation formats and lengths. The Conference Committee welcomes a variety of proposals including: Individual presentations Panel discussions (multiple, complementary speakers on a single topic) Practical workshop sessions Digital - posters (with an optional additional hard copy submission) Lightning talks (5/10 minute sessions) Abstracts should be submitted to convenor@alla.asn.au and submissions clo...
Post a Comment
Read more

Register Now for Library Leadership: A Celebration

By
All members of the Western Australian Library sector are invited to attend this all day professional development event. Organised as a joint project by representatives from LIS within WA including, ALIA West, ALLA (WA), WASLA, ALIA ARL WA, ALIA HLA, WALTG, TAFE WA Learning Resources Services Network, CURTIS, and with special thanks to the State Library of Western Australia. This event will offer attendees the chance to improve cross sector networking, by getting together, discussing and exploring what we all how in common and how we can all positively influence our changing profession. The day will earn ALIA members 6 points for the ALIA PD scheme and include:     Guest Speakers Dr Carmen Lawrence, formed Premier of Western Australia and Jennefer Nicholson, former Secretary General of IFLA Workshops and Discussion Panels Speed Networking and Laughing Yoga Library Leadership: A Celebration will be held at the State Library of Western Australia on Friday 19th of ...
Post a Comment
Read more