Can you remember what your institution’s home page looked like when the service was first launched? And how did it evolve over time? Did you take advantage of frames when they were first released? Did you then exploit client-side technologies such as Java, JavaScript and Flash (and perhaps even ActiveX control)? And how long did they last before you realised the downside of such technologies?
And did changes to the home page not only reflect changes in technologies, but also the department which had responsibility for the home page? Did the home page have a visual makeover when the marketing department took responsibility?
More importantly, though, do you have a record of how the home page looked, and documented descriptions of the reasons for the changes? This could be a valuable part of your organisation’s digital history and it would be unfortunate if such information were lost.
If strikes me that one of the lessons we should have learnt from our experiences with organisational Web sites is the need for such record-keeping. And these lessons should be applied to the approaches we are taking in a Web 2.0 environment, as we (as seems to be the case) set up institutional presences in Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc.
How should we go about doing this? Should we take screen shots of the interface when substantive changes are made? Or perhaps at fixed intervals (monthly, perhaps)? And can we automated the process? Or should such data be a standard item in Web team reports?
Or rather than capturing the screen interface, should we not be harvesting the HTML pages? And how easy will this be if the pages are dependent on the installation of particular applications?
Has anybody started to address such issues?
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.le.ac.uk/
I was going to suggest the Wayback Machine – let someone else do the hard work!
I’m sure many places are also now using some form of version control which would allow you to roll back static content to any previous version. Databases are a bit more tricky so the dynamic content on a site wouldn’t be present with this.
I was also going to suggest the Wayback machine. Bath appears first in April 1997; interestingly, when I load it, I am asked to login to Bath’s intranet! Perhaps some history is best left un-recorded? (-;)
http://web.archive.org/web/19970418234503/http://www.bath.ac.uk/
The effort that goes into preserving ephemera!
Will it can be mildly interesting for a few seconds, and the subject of historical research are we preserving too much rubbish? what is the cost? what is the loss?
DEL *.* I say!
Talking of time machines, I’m glad to see that part of my Bath University H.G.Wells website is still visible to the world (9 Feb 1999). The hit counter is forever frozen at 20,734 hits (sob!).
Seems to me that the design of a Web site changes on whim, fashion, latest technology trend, etc., a bit like bathrooms. 🙂 I don’t really want to keep of record of why I changed my bathroom from dodgy wallpaper to flash tiles (tiles that’ll look dated in 10 years time) and I’m not really convinced I’d want to record why we changed the RDN’s homepage from the old look to a new one (indeed, I remember – the old one just looked dated).
Bigger changes maybe – “why did Royal Mail become Consignia and then Royal Mail again?” of which the Web site design is part, for example, or “why we migrated to Linux from Solaris” which may alter the delivery of a Web site – but changes in design are a bit like changes clothes. Like Tom says, ephemera.