Wed, 15 Oct 2003 -- Media Matters No. 37
The value of archives and dating

Enough time has now passed that we're beginning to understand how people use the electronic communication tools we've created. One thing we've learned is that websites increase in value if they serve as archives.

Most people do not "surf the web" constantly. They rely on a few websites that they know provide information they need. The rely on email messages and email listservs to bring them new information and inform them about issues and material they might otherwise not run across. And they use internet search engines -- increasingly, the one search engine that stands out is google.com -- to quickly find website information about -- well, just about anything.

Reporters behave in the same ways as the rest of us in using the technology in these three ways. When they "google" for a bit of information (or a source) to complete a story they're working on, your site has a better chance of popping up in the search engine if you have kept information on your site, rather than removing it. Information stored on a website constitutes its "archives." They don't have to be in a directory called "archives"; they don't have to be in a database server accessible only for a fee (as some newspapers do). If the information is on your site and IF your webmaster has coded its meta-tags correctly (see Media Matters No. 34), a search engine like google.com will find it.

The point? Keep material on your website. Web servers can hold a prodigious amount of material; there's no need for bloated graphics files. Text files take up very little space. If you are in the business of issuing reports and studies, keep them all on your website, so they can be found.

But -- be sure to affix a "dateline" to every html document on your site. It can either be at the start of the page -- or at the end (often written as "Posted on (date)"). Be sure to include the year as well-- there now are web archives going back almost a decade! None of this is hard to do -- in fact, it requires that you NOT do something: Don't remove content. Just archive it. And date it. Then it's available to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

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