Author: Brett (Page 3 of 4)

Perma in the news: Society of American Archivists, President Obama

January 12, 2017 / Brett

Some exciting recent appearances of Perma in the wild:

A recent issue of Society of American Archivist’s Archival Outlook featured an article outlining the SAA’s decision to adopt Perma.cc for their book publishing program:

Beginning this year, SAA books will include permalinks for all cited web resources, not just those that have been assigned a DOI or some other permalink.

This is possible because SAA’s book publishing program recently joined forces with perma.cc. SAA’s participation in the service is sponsored by the Digital Public Library of America and we hope it sets a model for other association publishers outside of law journals, for which perma.cc was originally developed.

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When logged in at the perma.cc site, [book author Anthony] Cocciolo sees folders showing sites that have been archived both for his project and for other SAA book projects. This helps him keep track of his own citations and to see what other SAA authors are citing, while also helping editors improve the quality of SAA publications.

…[Graduate assistant Allison] Chomet noted that she was “impressed with how easy it is to use.”

SAA also “recommends that authors use the bookmarklet that perma.cc provides on their website, as a low-barrier way to capture citations. That way, permalinking won’t slow down the writing or editing process, and readers will see exactly what the author saw at the time of writing.”

In other news, President Obama penned a Harvard Law Review article on the President’s role in advancing criminal justice reform. This is the first time a sitting president has written a law review article.

The article includes 226 web citations, each of which include a Perma Link- ensuring readers of the article will have access to archives of the cited webpages, even if the source page changes or is taken down.

We’re excited Perma.cc is proving such an effective tool for the SAA, the HLR and President Obama to use for preservation and citation! Check out the SAA article in full here, and Pres. Obama’s article here.

Interested in trying out Perma yourself? Create your own account!

Perma’s v0.80 Release – New look, new badges

December 1, 2016 / Brett

Perma’s latest release included a few tweaks to help our users better understand their link creation limits.

“Unlimited” badges
All institutional account holders are able to create an unlimited number of Perma Links, when the links are associated with an Organization that they’re in. To make this clearer, we’ve added a badge next to each Org’s name that reads.

“Personal Links” and Link Limit Banner
To further illuminate the fact that non-organization links are for that user alone – and subject to the 10 links/month limit – we’ve changed the name of My Links to “Personal Links.”

When an org user has only 3 links remaining in their Personal Links folder, they get a message that displays across the top of the screen, notifying them they’re nearing their personal link limit:

screen-shot-2016-11-21-at-2-23-33-pm

This will help encourage org users to utilize their unlimited link option by associating links with their given organization, rather than their Personal Links.

Try out Perma.cc yourself at https://perma.cc !

Perma.cc Closer Look: Debbie Ginsberg

November 10, 2016 / Brett

Educational technology librarian Deborah Ginsberg recently led a excellent “Cool Tools” workshop at the 2016 American Association of Law Libraries conference, wherein she demonstrated the utility of Perma.cc to many of the attendees. I caught up with Debbie a few weeks after the AALL conference to find out more about her (and her institution’s) thoughts on Perma.

Currently Educational Technology Librarian at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Debbie has been instrumental in promoting Perma.cc as a way to help those at Chicago-Kent Law fight link and reference-rot.
Originally hearing about Perma through email lists, Chicago-Kent use has primarily centered around faculty using it for their own articles and publications, as well as for in-class materials and links. Faculty members had also noted the New York Times article on Perma.cc, raising their interest in utilizing Perma. Debbie feels one of Perma’s best selling points is its sheer ease of use, and considers law journals as the best area to next expand Perma.cc usage at Chicago-Kent.

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Follow Debbie on Twitter, and if you get the chance to catch one of her Cool Tools presentations at a conference do so!

Perma’s newest registrar, the National Constitution Center

October 25, 2016 / Brett

We’re happy to announce the National Constitution Center has recently been brought on board as a Perma registrar. A private, nonprofit organization, the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA serves as one of America’s leading platforms for constitutional education and debate, fulfilling its Congressional charter “to disseminate information about the U.S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis.”

The National Constitution Center will be using Perma to develop their online Interactive Constitution, which presents the full text of the U.S. Constitution along with essays by leading scholars from across a range of perspectives, and to prevent link rot in their explainers and white papers.

The NCC reached out to us to see if they could become a Perma registrar. Interested in seeing if your nonprofit or legal organization may qualify? Contact us!

Logo used with permission from Lana Ulrich @ National Constitution Center.

Perma’s v0.76 release, cleaner and clearer

October 18, 2016 / Brett

This week’s release pushed out improves to a smattering of areas. Worth noting:

UI: improvements to the navigation, as well as addressing a few bugs with the user login process.
Size limit consistency: we’ve now set a fixed limit in Perma.cc archive sizes, as well as files (images, PDFs) that are uploaded to replace the screenshot view: 100 MB.

Questions? Feedback? Contact the Perma team!

Extensions and a Bookmarklet: Making Perma Links is Easier than Ever

October 5, 2016 / Brett

Thanks to the hard work of our new Perma developer Rebecca Cremona, we’re happy to announce Perma.cc now has a snappy browser extension for easily creating Perma links, available in both Chrome and Firefox.

How does it work?

When you click the extension button in your browser (which appears as the Perma infinity symbol), a new window opens and directs you to the Create a Perma Link page, with the URL of the page you had been viewing automatically filled in.

Both extensions can be found at https://perma.cc/settings/tools, as well as in their respective browsers’ add-on/web stores:

The bookmarklet works similarly. the bookmarklet, which is also located in the Tools page, can be dragged into your browser’s bookmarks bar, and when you’re on a page you wish to Perma, simply click the bookmark and it will trigger the same process as above: opening a new Create Perma Link window with the URL auto-filled in.

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We’re constantly working on more ways to make your Perma.cc experience faster and easier. Suggestions? Contact us!

Perma.cc: now a Memento-approved archive!

October 4, 2016 / Brett

Memento is a project which aims to make web archives easier to access: rather than expect a user to know all the specific archive services available, Memento pulls together all archives that adhere to its protocol and allows other services to leverage this collection of archives. For example, Memento’s Time Travel Find allows users submit a URL and date, and, if there is an archive of it in one of the many archive services that Memento supports, it will direct the user to that archive.

We are proud to announce that Perma.cc is now a Memento approved archive! This means that a user searching for a webpage on Memento’s Time Travel Find project, or any other Memento tool that utilizes the protocol, will also have any applicable public Perma links served up along side the other Memento-protocol adhering archives.

Memento is also accessible as a Chrome extension.

Interested in Perma? Create a free Perma.cc account today!

Memento logo used by permission from Michael Nelson.

LIL Summer Fellows 2016: a (Video) Recap

September 27, 2016 / Brett

The Library Innovation Lab recently said farewell to our first contingent of Summer Fellows. Below is a short video recap of their experience in LIL – working on their own projects as well as collaborating with us on on-going projects such as Perma:

…and be sure to check out our full Fellows recap page for more on their projects, as well as links to their work: http://lil.law.harvard.edu/fellows

A Tale of Two Shortlinks: Supreme Court Edition

September 15, 2016 / Brett

Two recent instances of shortened URLs appearing in Supreme Court decisions serves as an excellent use-case of considerations for when linking to content on the web.

The first is the use of a shortened Google URL on page 5 of this decision:

This seems to be the first instance where a URL shortener was used in a Supreme Court decision (The shortened URL was copied from the Respondent’s merits brief). Using a Google URL shortener, in addition to saving space and appearing shorter, raises additional considerations:

Google makes the analytics public for its shortened links. Any organization that uses a shortened Google link must consider whether or not they want these analytics public regarding those who access content through this link.
While Google may not control the content that is linked to, it does control the redirect URL. This means that Google can choose to change – or take down – the shortened URL as it deems fit.

The second is the use of a Perma.cc link in page 5 of this opinion:

(Perma link originally copied from the Petitioner’s brief). The Perma link does shorten the URL used, but more importantly, the linked content is archived and preserved through Perma’s library partners, ensuring the accuracy of the link for those who who cite this opinion in the future and removing the risk of link rot.

Update: Dual citation is a smart choice when available, too, as it allows the reader to view the source directly in the text (instead of having to click the link), and makes the source URL reachable directly from the citation rather than just potentially through the archive’s URL. Hat tip to Herbert Van De Sompel for pointing this out!

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Any courts interested in using Perma to preserve the accuracy and permanence of links in their decisions should reach out to the team at info@perma.cc! We would be happy to assist you in creating an account; courts are eligible to create an unlimited amount of Perma links for their decisions.

Perma.cc – back at AALL!

July 16, 2016 / Brett

Perma.cc will be back at the upcoming American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting in Chicago, spreading the good word of archiving and link preservation.

We will be sharing a table with our friends at LIPA on Saturday through Tuesday, July 16-19. Be sure to find us for some great Perma swag at table 819!