Compressing URLs

By cryptoref on Sun, 05/03/2020 - 14:26

Forums

What are the thoughts on using URL shorteners?

When an archive isn't using some sort of persistent ID, you end up with lots of gobbley gook that isn't guaranteed to be persistent (like the following

https://stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl/zoek-en-ontdek/stamboom/zoeken-op-personen/?mivast=184&miadt=184&miaet=54&micode=999-06.1928M&minr=10229274&miview=ldt&utm_source=OpenArchieven&utm_medium=browser&utm_campaign=OpenData

I can shorten using an online compressor like is.gd and you get 

https://is.gd/tHDltD 

Both get you to the same place but one is a heck of a lot shorter. If the underlying huge one changes, like they go to persistent ID's, like they should, the short link won't work but then the long one didn't either and you don't have much help trying to get back to the digital page. If your layer 1 is correct then you can find the document in the new scheme and get the new link.

One should never do this if the archive is using persistent ID's even when they are long as that persistent ID should always help in recovering the page to go to.

 

Submitted byEEon Sun, 05/03/2020 - 20:20

cryptoref, EE sees no problem with using a URL compressor, so long as it appears in a citation that otherwise identifies the website and the material of interest. We frequently use TinyURL or Bitly. In cases such as yours, the long URL might also be shortened by dropping everything from the ? to the end. Doing that generates the same landing page generated by both your long URL and your compressed one.

 

Submitted byyhoitinkon Mon, 05/04/2020 - 09:10

From a digital preservation viewpoint, I personally don't use URL shorteners since your link then relies on two websites still being operational: the original website and the shortener, which exponentially increases the chances of broken links.

With websites that use the software by this vendor, you can click the [...] button on the right to get a link. Sometimes, that's a handle, a permanent link. In this case, it isn't a handle, but it's still shorter than what you have:
https://stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl/zoek-en-ontdek/archieven/zoekrestultaat-archieven/?mivast=184&miadt=184&miaet=54&micode=999-06.1928M&minr=10229274&miview=ldt 

From experience with the software of this vendor, I've learned that these URLs are not stable. The numbers in the parameters change over time and record sets that used to be accessible using one parameter are later accessible via another parameter. For this reason, I include the direct URLs obtained via the [...] button in my research notes, but use the clean URL https://stadsarchief.rotterdam.nl/apps/stadsarchief.nl/zoek-en-ontdek/stamboom/ in my published citations.  

Submitted bycryptorefon Tue, 05/05/2020 - 12:06

Thanks again everyone. I'm going to use them when I can to help avoid citations that are 4 times the size of the sentence they cite :) 

Yvette thanks for the pointers on the sites, good to know who have URL's as fixed as the Birnham woods.