VERSION AUGMENTED URIS FOR REFERENCE PERMANENCE VIA AN APACHE MODULE DESIGN

The World Wide Web is perhaps the most convenient library resource eve r to exist. Yet it also suffers from a critical flaw: WWW document cit ations existing as clickable links and as standard references in print ed documents are quite unreliable. This arises from the ease with whic h these documents may be altered. Alteration of cited WWW documents ma y lead to the citations themselves becoming invalid or inaccurate. Pri nted documents are less prone to such problems due to the greater diff iculty in altering or eradicating them. As a consequence of the altera bility of WWW documents, the whole traditional system of new work buil ding upon an archive of unchangeable previous work ceases to be valid. For the first time in history, documents are being built upon a shift ing foundation to an extent of ever increasing and serious proportions . This work investigates a system aimed at encouraging the stability o f WWW documents. In doing so it helps to preserve the accuracy of cita tions over time. The system presented extends a document's URI (Univer sal Resource Identifier) to include date or revision information thus allowing document providers to permit users to refer accurately to a p articular document version. This paper both describes the system and d emonstrates its use. The system is implemented as an Apache WWW server module. The module processes and retrieves documents referenced with extended URIs. It provides a model public domain system for alleviatin g the problem of content stable WWW documents. (C) 1998 Published by E lsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.