Alerting users to URL changes

[George Porter]

Eric Rumsey inquired about "...different ways of alerting users to URL
changes?" and offers three options

> >1-An automatic redirect
> >2-Put a message at the old URL that has a link to the new URL, that
> has to be clicked by the user.
> >3-Combination of #1 and #2 - Old URL has link to new, and says
> something like "Click here if you are not >automatically redirected
> after a few seconds."
> 
> All are effective.  I have some difficulty with the first.  I have
> encountered sites where it is impossible to use Back to return from
> whence ye came.  I'm partial to right clicking at work or click&hold
> at home, depending upon platform and browser, to step back through a
> series of pages when I've been drilling down to explore a site in
> depth.  My primo example, which done me wrong as recently as last
> week, has fixed the problem.   
> 
> Solution 2 is a bane to my existence as I try to maintain a large and
> growing collection links.  Most link exercising software will
> recognize the message page, "Sorry Bozo, we moved two years ago
> to...", as a valid link.  After all, a page loads.  Very frustrating.
> Does anyone know of link checkers with the ability to flag this kind
> of thing for inspection?
> 
> #3 gets around the problem of "you can't go back again" engendered by
> the delayless redirect in #1.  It provides the info for users to
> update their personal bookmarks.  It doesn't get around the problem of
> #2 alone, though.  Still a valid page to a link checker.  Still egg on
> my face in the provision of high quality library service until I have
> a need to revisit the link personally.
> 
> I HAVE received notification of link migrations from commerical
> providers to whom we link.  Almost exclusively from free content
> providers.  The latest was from ChermConnect after they acquired the
> rights to Chemical Web Marketing & Technology
> <http://www.chemconnect.com/cwmt.shtml>.  Of course, I've seen
> Elsevier and the Institute of Physics radically alter their url scheme
> without hearing a peep from the vendor.
> 
> George S. Porter
> Technical Reference Librarian
> Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering & Applied Science
> 
> California Institute of Technology
> Mail Code 1-43, Pasadena, CA  91125
> Telephone (626) 395-3409 Fax (626) 431-2681
> george at library.caltech.edu