Death-proofing Web Citations with Perma.cc
Speaker(s)
Session Description
As the citation of web pages in journal articles, court briefs and decisions continues to grow, the permance of the cited item becomes increasingly important. However recent research has shown that 50% of the links in Supreme Court decisions from 1996-2010 had reference rot, one in five articles suffers from reference rot, and three out of four URI references lead to changed content. This link-rot and content drift is alarming for its potential to undermine the integrity of both the scholarly record and the law itself.
Enter Perma.cc: when a user creates a Perma.cc link, Perma.cc archives the referenced content and generates a link to an archived record of the page. Regardless of what may happen to the original source, the archived record will always be available through the Perma.cc link. Over 500,000 links have been preserved through the Perma.cc service from users at over 200 courts and academic institutions.
This session will discuss what makes Perma.cc different, and at times more effective, for citations than other archiving services, recent developments, its use in the legal (and legal ed) arena, and prompt discussion and solicit feedback about how best to educate regarding link-rot, expand use in other academic institutions, and how Perma.cc's new commercial option can best benefit firms and other commercial entities. (Speaker may be joined by managing director of the Library Innovation Lab, Adam Zeigler.)