[WEB4LIB] Re: Old American Memory Project Link no longer

[Richard Wiggins]

Well, I guess reasonable people may differ as to what constitutes a
good-looking link.  I've always felt that one should NEVER prominently
publish a URL that includes the .html (or gaaack .htm) file name.  It should
be a folder with a properly working default index file.  For very specific
citations (as opposed to major starting points) it might be a different
matter.

To my mind, then, http://memory.loc.gov is a good URL to publish for the
planet.  Or americanmemory.org.  Or anything, er, memorable.

But none of this has anything to do with the real issue, which is link rot. 
LOC has mindshare for one of the most important projects in digital
libraries, and they should only break URLs they've published as a last, last
resort.

/rich


"Sika Berger" wrote:

> 
> 
> The link we use is still functioning:
> 
> <a
href="http://mail.richardwiggins.com//jump/http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html">http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html</a>
> 
> I notice the American Memory &quot;home&quot; link is to:
> <a
href="http://mail.richardwiggins.com//jump/http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html">http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html</a>
> 
> which looks better than memory.loc.gov alone.
> 
> We link to American Memory from selected dynamic subject pages (through
> a resources database &amp; content management tool), but it is not on our
> &quot;databases by title&quot; list (primarily subscription databases). 
But it is
> something we've considered adding there!  The main entry and 60+
> individual resources appear in our OPAC, so if/when we finally make the
> automatic connections between our catalog and web resources database,
> we'll have those links ready to go on subject or interdisciplinary
> pages.
> 
> Sika Berger
> Smith College Libraries
> Northampton, MA 01063
> sberger at smith.edu
> 

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