[WEB4LIB] Old American Memory Project Link no longer working

[Richard Wiggins]

You know, there really is no reason why such links, no matter how old,
should be broken.  AltaVista finds about 9000 links to this server.  About
100 of those links are from loc.gov sites themselves! The rs6.loc.gov server
is still online.  Go to its root and it emits:

   This U.S. Government system is restricted by law to authorized, official
use only. 

As long as that rs6 box is alive, there's no reason why it can't redirect
folks to the current host/URL.  Redirects are very cheap -- almost free.  So
redirect and return Error 404 status so that spiders stop indexing the pages.

I guess we've determined that the duration of American Memory is about 6
years.  :-(

/rich

(PS - how to build an Error 404 handler:
http://search.msu.edu/help/providers/errorhandler/)


Nancy Sosna Bohm wrote:

> 
> Just in case we are not the only institution on this list for whom this
> change has escaped notice:
> 
> The old American Memory Project link:
> <a
href="http://mail.richardwiggins.com//jump/http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html">http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html</a>
> is no longer linking to anything.
> The new link is:
> <a
href="http://mail.richardwiggins.com//jump/http://memory.loc.gov">http://memory.loc.gov</a>/
> 
> And while we're on the subject, do any of you include it among your
> databases?
> 
> --Nancy Bohm
>   Reference Librarian
>   (847) 735-5057
>   Donnelley Library
>   Lake Forest College
>   Lake Forest, Illinois

____________________________________________________
Richard Wiggins
Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on Internet Topics
rich at richardwiggins.com       www.richardwiggins.com