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Link Rot Isn’t Unique to the Legal Field

April 1, 2019 / Clare / 0 Comments

Journalism – like scholarship – relies on citation, primary information, and credibility.

Perma.cc sprung up as a direct answer to a problem identified in legal scholarship: originally a tool in the fight legal link rot, and it has become a staple in the lives of many law students as they write for their journals and even after they leave school.

It’s important to note, though, that the basis of our code – literally and figuratively – is not unique to the legal field. While we’re a team of librarians and coders who work in a law library, the tools we build are for everyone.

Link rot is a not a issue unique to the law world: as we started exploring our user base outside of academia, one of the first user groups that came to the forefront was journalists, for whom link rot is a problem from many angles.

For an industry that in many ways now relies on click counts and interconnected content for revenue streams and user statistics, there are hang ups when it comes to freezing web content in the way that Perma.cc does. Nonetheless, it is an issue that should be considered as part of the journalistic ecosystem.

As you can see in this article from The Atlantic authors do not have a singular approach to web references. This particular article, published less than a year and a half ago, contains 25 linked citations. One of them is a Perma record, which has preserved a copy of a criminal procedure law will be available to readers in the long term. It makes sense for that particular citation to be frozen in time, as it is important to capture the law at that very moment it is referenced, not what it may be in the future. 23 of the other 24 links still send readers to a live source, for now. They are largely links to other news sites and in the short term having live links works well. One link however found in the fifth paragraph – which cites a study that is a central aspect of the article’s argument – leads readers to a 404 error page.

The story is the same with this article, also less than a year and a half old, from Time that has a 404 error on a link to their own website. On the flip side, in the first paragraph, the author uses a Perma Link to reference an event held at her alma mater’s church. That decision proved to be a wise one, since that link no longer works. Other URLs send readers to sites that are currently live, but obviously are vulnerable.

For journalists, it is interesting to see what type of content is viewed as stable (other news organizations – despite frequent site restructuring like is seen at Time) versus ephemeral (calendar listings).

Are you a journalist? Where are these lines for you? What do you consider ephemeral versus stable when you’re citing the web? Does your newsroom have rules when it comes to maintaining click tracking? Do you take link rot into consideration at all as you choose your internet sources?

Updates to our Terms of Service

In conjunction with updates to Perma.cc that will roll out on January 22, 2019 we will be making some changes to our Terms of Service that we wanted to let our users know about. The main edits are as follows:

Added language that broadens the stated scope of uses for Perma.cc – all non-commercial scholarly work, research, reporting, criticism and commenting are considered legitimate use of the service.
Revised language regarding free and ongoing link creation outside of use sponsored by a registrar.

You can read our updated Terms of Service in full below.

Effective Date: January 22, 2019

Use of the website http://perma.cc/ (the “Site”) and the content and services provided through the Site is subject to the following terms and conditions. By using the Site, you accept and agree to be legally bound by these Terms of Service, whether or not you register for an account. If you are using the Site on behalf of an organization, you are agreeing to these Terms of Service for that organization and promising that you have authority to bind that organization to these Terms of Service. In that case, “you” and “your” will refer to the organization on behalf of which you are using the Site.

If any of these Terms of Service is unacceptable to you, do not use the Site.

The Site is operated by President and Fellows of Harvard College (“Harvard”) in support of its mission to educate and disseminate knowledge and information. As used in these Terms of Service, “we,” “us” and “our” refer to the Harvard Law School Library’s Perma.cc initiative and to Harvard more generally.

Perma.cc helps people create links for citations in scholarly, legal and other works. Through the Site, people can create links to and direct us to store archival copies of web pages cited in their works. Visitors to the Site can access those links and archival copies under certain conditions. The services provided by us through or in connection with the Site are referred to collectively as the “Service.”

Changes to Terms of Service Are Binding; Other Policies
- (a) We may change these Terms of Service from time to time without advance notice. Your use of the Site or Service after any changes have been made will constitute your agreement to the modified Terms of Service and all of the changes. Accordingly, you should read the Terms of Service from time to time for any changes. We will provide a link to the current Terms of Service on the Site, and will show the date on which the Terms of Service were last updated.
- (b)In addition to reviewing this Agreement, you should read our Privacy Policy http://perma.cc/privacy-policy/ and Copyright Policy http://perma.cc/copyright-policy. By using the Site or Service, you also accept those policies.
Use of Site and Service
- (a)You may use the Site and Service, including content stored at the direction of users, only for non-commercial scholarly, research, reporting, criticism and commenting purposes that do not infringe or violate anyone’s copyright or other rights.
- (b)You agree to use the Site and the Service only in ways that comply with all applicable laws as well as these Terms of Service.
Account Creation, Maintenance, and Termination
- (a)In order to use certain portions of the Service, you will need to register with us and create an account. When registering for an account with us, you will be asked to provide personal information such as your name and email address and, in some situations, your institutional affiliation. You represent and warrant that all information provided in establishing an account, and at other points as required in the use of the Service, is current, accurate, and complete, and that you will maintain the accuracy and completeness of this information. If we previously terminated your account, you may not register for another account. You agree that we may contact you from time to time in reference to the Service.
- (b)As a registered account holder, you must maintain the confidentiality and security of your username(s) and password(s). You agree not to share, transfer, or authorize others to use your username and password or your account without our prior written approval. Any attempt to do so will be considered a violation of these Terms of Service.
- (c)You agree that you are solely responsible for all usage or activity on your account, including, but not limited to, use of the account by another person, with or without authorization. You agree to notify us immediately if you have reason to believe that your account is no longer secure.
- (d)We reserve the right to terminate or restrict access to your account and to delete or disable access to any links created and/or content stored in connection with the account, in our sole discretion, without advance notice, and shall have no liability for doing so. We will terminate your account in appropriate circumstances if you are determined to be a repeat infringer.
Links to Third-Party Sites

The Site and Service provide links to third-party websites (“Third Party Sites”). We do not control and have not reviewed all material made available through Third-Party Sites linked from the Site. We do not endorse, are not affiliated with, and are not responsible for the availability of Third-Party Sites. You agree that use of Third Party Sites is at the your own risk and that we have no responsibility or liability, directly or indirectly, for any content accessed at or any damage or losses you incur in connection with any Third-Party Site. We encourage you to be aware of the terms and conditions and privacy policies of any Third-Party Sites that you visit.
User Submitted Content and Licensing
- (a)Some portions of the Service enable users to direct us to store content (“User Submitted Content”) and make it available. With respect to any and all User Submitted Content that you may direct us to store, or that you may vest in connection with a publication in which it is cited, you represent and warrant as follows:
  - (i) that the User Submitted Content both (1) is freely available on the Internet to the general public without paying, registering with the website, or the like and (2) is cited in a legal work or in a work of scholarship, reporting, criticism or commentary;
  - (ii)that you lawfully acquired any User Submitted Content you provide us to upload;
  - (iii)that you have all rights necessary both to direct us to store the User Submitted Content and to grant any rights granted by you pursuant to these Terms of Service; and
  - (iv)that our storage, use, display and making available of the User Submitted Content in connection with the Service does not and will not infringe or violate the copyrights or other rights of any third party.
- (b)You are solely responsible for any User Submitted Content you submit or direct us to store, and for the consequences of its being stored and made available as part of the Service.
- (c)By submitting User Submitted Content, furnishing a link or otherwise directing us to store or vest User Submitted Content, you grant us, under any rights that you hold therein, a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, non-exclusive, fully paid-up, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license to use, reproduce, create derivative works based upon, transmit, distribute, perform, display, and make available the User Submitted Content, in any medium now in existence or later developed, in connection with the Service or otherwise in furtherance of our mission, including but not limited to promotional uses, and to authorize others to do the foregoing.
- (d)We reserve the right, but are not obligated, to monitor use of the Service and to review, modify, take down or delete any User Submitted Content, in our sole discretion, without notice, at any time. You may not be able to modify, take down or delete links or User Submitted Content that you direct us to store.
Rules of Usage

Use of the Service is subject to the following restrictions and obligations:
- (a)You may not impersonate, imitate, or pretend to be someone else when using the Service.
- (b)You agree not to access links or content that you are not authorized to access.
- (c)You agree not to log into a server or account that you are not authorized to access.
- (d)You may not attempt to probe, scan or test the vulnerability of a system or network to breach security or authentication measures without authorization.
- (e)You may not disrupt, overwhelm, attack, modify, reverse engineer, or interfere with the Service or associated software or hardware in any way. You agree not to attempt to gain unauthorized access to our servers by any means – including, without limitation, by using administrator passwords or by posing as an administrator while using the Service or otherwise.
- (f)You are solely responsible for installing any anti-virus software or related protections against viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines or engines that are intended to damage, destroy, disrupt or otherwise impair a computer’s functionality or operation.
- (g)You must be 18 of age or older to use the Service, and fully competent to enter into and comply with these Terms of Use. If we learn that we have collected information from a child under the age of 13, we will delete that information promptly.
Intellectual Property
- (a)The Site and much of the text, images, and other content of the Site are protected by copyright, trademark and other laws. We or others own the copyright and other rights in the Site, the Site content and the Service. All rights in the Site, the Site content and the Service that are not expressly granted are reserved.
- (b)You are granted no right or license to use any trademarks, service marks or logos displayed on the Site. Any use or registration of such marks – including but not limited to use in connection with any product or service in any way that is likely to cause confusion among customers or that disparages or discredits the mark owner – is prohibited.
- (c)We respect the intellectual property rights and other proprietary rights of others. If you believe that your copyright has been violated on the Site, please notify us as set forth in our Copyright Policy http://perma.cc/copyright-policy.
Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless us, our affiliates, governing board members, officers, employees, agents and representatives, and any party with whom we may contract to provide the Service, from and against any claims, liabilities, losses, damages, costs and expenses, including but not limited to reasonable attorneys’ fees and court costs, arising out of or in any way connected to your use of the Site or Service, including but not limited to any allegation or claim that, if true, reflects your violation of these Terms of Service or the infringement or violation by you (or occurring through use of your account) of any intellectual property or other right of any person or entity.
Termination of Service

We reserve the right at any time to modify, suspend or discontinue the Site or Service, in whole or in part, without notice, and shall have no liability for doing so.
Disclaimer of Warranties; Limitations of Liability and Remedies
- (a)WHILE WE ASPIRE TO PRESERVE LINKS AND ARCHIVAL COPIES OF CONTENT STORED AT THE DIRECTION OF USERS, WE MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES, OR UNDERTAKINGS AS TO PERMANENCE OR THE DURATION OF PRESERVATION. AS INDICATED ELSEWHERE IN THESE TERMS OF USE, WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO DELETE OR DISABLE ACCESS TO USER SUBMITTED CONTENT, AND TO TERMINATE ALL OR PART OF THE SERVICE AT ANY TIME. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT STORED LINKS MAY FAIL TO WORK.
- (b)THE SITE AND THE CONTENT ARE PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS. TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND (EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR OTHERWISE) REGARDING THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR ANY SITE CONTENT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE MAKE NO WARRANTY ABOUT THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, COMPLETENESS, TIMELINESS, SUFFICIENCY, QUALITY OR SECURITY OF THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR ANY SITE CONTENT. WE DO NOT APPROVE OR ENDORSE ANY USER SUBMITTED CONTENT OR CONTENT PROVIDED BY OTHERS. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SITE WILL OPERATE WITHOUT ERROR OR INTERRUPTION, OR THAT THE SITE OR ITS SERVER IS FREE OF COMPUTER VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL MATERIALS.
- (c)YOUR USE OF THE SITE, THE SERVICE AND THE SITE CONTENT IS AT YOUR OWN SOLE RISK. IN NO EVENT SHALL WE BE LIABLE TO YOU, IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR ANY SITE CONTENT, OR YOUR USE THEREOF, OR THESE TERMS OF SERVICE, EVEN IF THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR ANY SITE CONTENT IS DEFECTIVE OR WE ARE NEGLIGENT OR OTHERWISE AT FAULT, AND REGARDLESS WHETHER WE ARE ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN NO EVENT SHALL WE BE LIABLE TO YOU, IN CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, FOR AN AGGREGATE AMOUNT GREATER THAN FIFTY DOLLARS ($50) IN CONNECTION WITH THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR ANY SITE CONTENT, OR YOUR USE THEREOF, OR THESE TERMS OF USE, EVEN IF THE SITE, THE SERVICE OR ANY SITE CONTENT IS DEFECTIVE OR WE ARE NEGLIGENT OR OTHERWISE AT FAULT. THE FOREGOING LIMITATIONS ARE EACH INTENDED TO BE INDEPENDENTLY ENFORCEABLE, REGARDLESS WHETHER ANY OTHER REMEDY FAILS OF ITS ESSENTIAL PURPOSE, AND SHALL APPLY TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.
Governing Law and Jurisdiction; Access from Outside Massachusetts

The Site is controlled and operated from our facilities in and around Cambridge, Massachusetts. These Terms of Service, and any claim or dispute that arises from or relates to your use of the Site, the Service or any Site content, will be governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, U.S.A., without regard to its conflicts of laws principles that would require or permit the law of another jurisdiction to apply. You agree that all such claims and disputes will be heard and resolved exclusively in courts sitting in Middlesex or Suffolk County, Massachusetts. You consent to the personal jurisdiction of such courts over you for this purpose, and waive and agree not to assert any objection to such proceedings in such courts (including any defense or objection of lack of proper jurisdiction or venue or inconvenience of forum). If you choose to access the Site or Service from locations other than Massachusetts, you will be responsible for compliance with all local laws of those other locations.
General; Entire Agreement
- (a)If any provision of these Terms of Use is held to be invalid or unenforceable, that provision, to the extent unenforceable, shall be struck, and shall not affect the validity or enforceability of the remaining provisions.
- (b)Your rights under these Terms of Service are personal, non-exclusive and non-transferable.
- (c)Headings are for reference purposes only and in no way define or limit the scope or extent of any provision of these Terms of Service.
- (d)Our failure to act with respect to a breach by you or others does not waive our right to act with respect to subsequent or similar breaches.
- (e)Nothing in these Terms of Service shall be deemed to confer any third-party rights or benefits.
- (f)These Terms of Use set forth the entire understanding and agreement between you and us with respect to the subject matter hereof, and supersede and replace any prior or contemporaneous understandings or agreements, whether written or oral, regarding the subject matter hereof.

Introducing Individual Account Subscription Tiers for Perma

January 7, 2019 / Clare / 7 Comments

For the last year or so, we’ve been working to understand the potential for Perma to help individuals and institutions outside the academic community combat link rot.

Two things have become clear through our work. First, link rot is a problem for lots of people, not just scholars. Indeed, link rot matters to anyone who cites, refers or links to web pages with the hope that they won’t change or disappear down the road. Second, Perma can help lots of people prevent link rot, whether or not they’re part of academia.

For Perma to continue to serve people outside the academic community, we have to make sure that we use our resources responsibly and focus on users with the greatest need to preserve web sources for public access.

To help us do that more effectively, we’re introducing monthly subscription tiers for people whose Perma usage is not sponsored and supported by academic libraries or other registrars:

Trial Use – Every account gets 10 free links upon registration.

Basic Use – For a $10 monthly fee, accounts can make up to 10 new links per month.

Intermediate Use – For a $25 monthly fee, accounts can make up to 100 new links per month.

Heavy Use – For a $100 monthly fee, accounts can make up to 500 new links per month.

As a result of these changes, accounts no longer will receive 10 free links on a recurring basis each month.

Free, unlimited service remains available for academic users whose Perma usage is supported by their libraries and for usage by courts. Similarly, academic institutions and courts will still continue to act as registrars for free. If you want to learn more about how academic institutions and courts can arrange for free service for those they support, please contact us.

Private organizations will continue to have the option of becoming registrars for their users at a monthly group rate. Associated users are able to create unlimited links via their sponsor organization for free, and have access to collaboration tools. Later this year, we’ll be expanding subscription options for private organizations and launching additional enhancements to help academic libraries support faculty and students using Perma.

Our explorations into Perma’s potential are ongoing, and we welcome feedback. You can contact us by emailing info at perma.cc.

MozFest 2018

November 13, 2018 / Clare / 0 Comments

The LIL team is a freewheelin’ one, always looking for new people to collaborate with, new ideas to connect to our current projects, and welcoming a little bit of chaos – so, naturally, Mozilla’s annual MozFest was a great fit for us to attend! Held this year in London, the event spanned over a week culminating in a large scale conference over the weekend. By their own description, MozFest is “a seven day celebration for, by, and about people who love the internet” and they certainly delivered on the enthusiasm. Over the weekend Ravensbourne University was transformed on all nine floors into the home of six distinct spaces designated for varying facets of the web. Decentralisation, Digital Inclusion, Openness, Privacy & Security, Web Literacy and a Youth Zone were the main “spaces”, each with its own set of speakers, session leaders and artists. Attendees were set free to visit each of these floors and facilitators encouraged to move away from lectures and towards hands-on workshops.

The Perma.cc session fell, appropriately, in the Web Literacy space, which took over the Ravensbourne library for Saturday and Sunday. We had a great discussion with internet users who were both familiar with the concept of link-rot and those who were seeing it in a new light. We created a physical web to help us visualize the ripple effect of a website going down. Here are some of us in the process of creating it:

Throughout the rest of the weekend, I was able to attend and experience some other great sessions:

In the web literacy space, an augmented reality view of the front page of the NYTimes: Users would hold iPads up to this large scale installation to see commentary on headlines. The augmentations ranged from funny to slightly off-putting, highlighting the experience of reading the news in the era of misinformation.

In someone else’s shoes: the prevalence of mobile-only internet access, and implications for users who are underserved in many other ways. The group gathered together and were all given user personas and a task to complete using only our mobile phones. Then, we were asked to map out our experiences on a large piece of paper. My partner and I put ourselves into the shoes of a middle-aged mother whose children had been her computer help until they both left for college. She now uses her sister’s smartphone when she needs to access the internet, and needed to apply for a government service. A lot of times, we think of online or digital solutions as simplifiers, but that’s not always the case. Here’s our visual representation of that experience:

Creating a feminist data set: Artist Caroline Sinders presented her work creating a dataset that would be capable of informing a responsibly programmed AI with a feminist perspective. Her work is concerned with how bias can trickle into technologies that are often viewed as objective. Her project seeks to create a dataset that is representative of intersectional feminism.

There were countless other sessions happening, including installations by our friends from MetaLab, a talk by Tim Berners-Lee on his latest work, and a conference-wide LARP event.

Thanks to all the facilitators and organizers! And long live a healthy internet!

iPres 2018

October 5, 2018 / Clare / 0 Comments

Perma got off the ground in 2013 as one piece of the digital preservation puzzle: helping prevent authors’ work from succumbing to the ephemeral nature of the internet by creating records of what on the web they use and reference. iPres, the longest running conference dedicated to digital preservation was founded 15 years ago, brings together pieces of the same puzzle from around the globe. The field is without doubt evolving quickly so we were very excited this year to attend iPres 2018, which was held in our home town of Boston. We shared our progress with others and participated in some exciting workshops along the way.

Some big takeaways from the week:

As this year marked 15 iPres conferences, there was a great deal of reflection going on. Maureen Pennock, Barbara Sierman, Sheila Morrisey sat on a “looking back” panel. In their eyes, digital preservation is an ongoing and iterative process in which great communication, planning, and having buy in from the right people is essential. For example, they see outside funding as an amazing catalyst in the digital preservation world. They also emphasized the merits of having every person in an institution who works with digital materials being aware of and participating in preservation. Going forward, they hope to see the use of machine learning and AI to help take on some of the entity and metadata extraction that is now a big drain on time. Finally, they hope that organizations will strive for collaboration and mutual problem solving by contributing to things like COPTR.

What’s COPTR, you ask? It stands for Community Owned (digital) Preservation Tool Registry, and it acts primarily as a finding and evaluation tool to help practitioners find the tools they need to preserve digital data. Anyone can contribute and edit the registry. Cool stuff. Perma has an entry now!

Finally, our friends over at Rhizome have some exciting stuff going on at their project, Webrecorder. Lead developer Ilya Kreymer is a friend of LIL and a former summer fellow here at the lab. Webrecorder, much like Perma, does not work like a traditional crawler that other archiving services use to capture the web. Instead, we’re both creating what we call “high fidelity” captures, created using a headless browser that records aspects of the code such embedded media, Javascript and other interactive content that crawlers miss.

This process creates a much higher quality capture, but has limitations in scale since the process is user-triggered. But, we were super excited about seeing that Ilya is also experimenting with capturing entire sites and platforms in this high fidelity way. You can check out his work with scalar now, although you must request access since it is not open to the public yet. Check out Ilya’s own words here.

We’ve always known here at Perma.cc that our effort to save the web’s citations from link rot was only one piece of the puzzle, and we loved hearing about how the other the puzzle pieces are iterating, growing and collaborating. Looking forward to next year!

Now You Can Pay for Unlimited Perma Links (Yes, You!)

September 20, 2018 / Clare / 0 Comments

We’ve said it time and again: link rot is everywhere on the internet. Anyone who is concerned with having reliable internet citations should know that they need to be proactive about preserving their URLs. No one wants to revisit a blog post, or a wikipedia edit, or their genealogy research and find that they’ve lost a reliable source. When you’re faced with a 404 that means more effort to track down that information again, whether it be on the Wayback Machine or at a new location. And that’s if it exists somewhere else at all.

Since its inception Perma has helped law journals and courts create permanent citations for their work without any cap on the amount of links created. Over 350 institutions have joined us as registrars, administering accounts for academic use. These registrars act as administrators helping patrons navigate and troubleshoot. Everyone else not associated with a registrar has been able to work with Perma as well, but once their 10 free links a month dried up, they were out of luck.

We’ve gotten requests in the past from non-academically affiliated users who are hoping to have access to more than ten free links (they’ll even pay for it, they said!) Well – we’re all about experimenting here at the Library *Innovation* Lab, so we’ve put together a way for individuals to pay a monthly subscription fee to access unlimited Perma usage. For now, our price is $20 a month. Subscribers have access to the same Perma platform but now with the ability to create as many links as you need (that batch link tool all the sudden becomes very useful!)

Upgrading is easy. There’s a link right below the URL input on your Perma.cc homepage that says “Upgrade to unlimited Perma Links”:

Clicking that link will bring you to a contact form to let us know you’re interested! Someone from our team will be in touch to get your unlimited account set up. If you’re new to Perma, you can start off right away with a premium account if you’d like. Just check the box during sign up and we’ll also be in touch:

Of course, those affiliated with academic institutions and courts will continue to have access to Perma for free, and you can still make 10 links per month as a non-paying user. But we’ve heard from enough of you that sometimes 10 links just isn’t enough! This is a new path for Perma, so we’d love to hear feedback about our model. If you’re an individual user, what would your ideal system be?

AALL 2018: LIL goes to Baltimore

July 23, 2018 / Clare / 0 Comments

Last weekend members of the LIL team traveled to Baltimore for the annual gathering of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). Armed with our new business cards (thanks Anastasia) and freshly pressed buttons (thanks LILterns) Brett, Adam and I were ready to attend sessions, catch up with colleagues and hit the exhibit hall.

We kicked the weekend off with a keynote speech from Baltimore’s own John Waters, author and director of boundary-pushing cult films such as “Hairspray” and “Pink Flamingos”. Beyond his connection to the conference’s host city, his appearance seemed at first to be an odd fit. However, as he pointed out, “librarians are brave, smart and sometimes pissed off…and they stand up for people who get overlooked” – all qualities he tries to get at in his movies. His thoughts on access to books for prisoners, the risks of censorship, and equality got everyone ready for the next couple of days.

Our friends at LIPA once again generously shared their exhibit hall table with the LIL team, for which we’re exceedingly grateful. It was great to work alongside Margie Maes, champion of LIL and Executive Director of LIPA who will be retiring this month. Congratulations, Margie! We will miss her, but were also thrilled to meet her successor, Michelle as well. Here’s to future collaborations!

A big goal of ours during AALL (in addition to spreading the word about new-and-improved H20, progress on the Caselaw Access Project, and new batch link creation for Perma) was to seek feedback and thoughts from colleagues about link and citation rot in the broader context. We’ve been rooted in our home of an academic law library – but we are seeking input and thoughts about linkrot in other industries and contexts.

We want to know: Who thinks linkrot is a problem for the flow of information and citation? What is their job? What kind of content is especially susceptible to the dreaded 404 error? At what points in the creation of the content are citations and links added? Whose responsibility is that? Are you seeing solutions to this problem? Email us! We’d love to talk.

Stay tuned for some of the answers we got during conversations at AALL!

Feature Update: Batch Link Creation

June 22, 2018 / Clare / 0 Comments

This week we are excited to announce the release of a long awaited Perma.cc feature: Batch Link Creation! Now, you can prevent link rot and citation drift en masse.

Before, your links were stowed away safely to be preserved for future use, but only one at a time. Now, you can create multiple Perma Links for your article, book, or briefing in one easy step. When you visit Perma.cc, select “Create Multiple Links” before you start.

Then simply collect the urls of the sites you want to capture and copy / paste them into the new upload portal:

The batch of Perma Links will be created and added to the folder of your choice, where you can treat them as individual records.

Here’s a good tip: if you use a citation creation tool like Zotero, you can export your chosen links into a .csv file (instructions here) and simply copy, paste, and preserve.

This feature is available to all Perma account holders but beware free account holders, those ten links per month might go faster than you were expecting. If you’re interested in learning more about our membership options for more frequent users give us a shout at info at perma.cc.

We’re always working to improve Perma. If you’re curious, all of our code is open source and available on Github and we have an API for developers.

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