Web document management

[Barbara Stewart]

Perhaps web documents will have to be divided into "monographs" and 
"serials" based on the frequency of change exhibited by the creators. It 
frequently happens that work responsibilities impede the most 
well-intentioned web document creator from frequent revisions of his/her 
pages (witness my own page, not revised since April ;-(     ). Since only 
about 5 major revisions have been made to my page, I've kept a paper copy of 
each, clearly labeled with date. Perhaps a plea could be made for web 
authors to display prominently on their page, a version number, along 
with date - 1.1, 1.2, etc. A paper copy could be maintained of each 
version.  Then, any comments could be addressed by "Which version number 
are you using?" This version number would then be able to be included in 
footnotes, bibliographies, webliographies, etc.  This would be the 
"monographic" approach.  Could a serials librarian please extrapolate a 
procedure for the "serials" approach?  This would be something that could 
be used for those pages that change daily or even hourly.


Barbara Stewart
stew at library.umass.edu