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Re: capturing websites - LONG POST



Thank you Richard, Sally and John for your comments and queries.

John, I do not at all take your questions and concerns as an argument..  and
don?t know why you?d think I would!  But I do believe I?m not being entirely
clear and I apologize for that.

Let me just begin by restating what I said in my original post.  We do copy
our entire website, directories and all, twice a year and it remains on our
server for those folks who might have a burning desire to look at it as it
originally appeared. I?m terribly sorry if I made it sound like we only
saved files as pdf ? not true.  You can view the site from any of our
workstations.  These files are fully navigable through our imaging software
or through a web browser, though links to the outside will most likely
become obsolete pretty quickly.   That process is a separate concern from
that of saving updates, which in our organization happen almost daily.

That said, perhaps that will dispel some of  the uneasiness about also
saving updates of individual pages within the site as one single file, not
navigable (in answer to your question, Sally)  True, you don?t get the
"feel" of a web page, but you certainly get the look and content, especially
if the corresponding links are indexed in the same folder.  The information
represented on each of our sub-pages spans across the records of our
organization and are handled like publicity pieces.  They are indexed as
such in the database, along with the corresponding paper documents and
artifacts. In other words, if I do a search on our database and it retrieves
a folder for me, I will be able to display all the digital documents for
that topic, and I will learn where I can find the paper documents on the
shelf.   Some of those digital documents are now web pages, saved as pdf
files, but many are scanned documents saved as tiff files.  Rarely if ever
do we use jpeg files, but I suppose tiff is just as good.  HTML simply isn?t
an option for our purposes.  You can?t mail someone an html and 5 graphic
files and expect them to be happy and at this point we do not have a public
space on our servers.  Optical disk storage works with indexing database
files to image files on the disks,  and that means you aren?t putting the
graphic files on a server with a hierarchy and sub-directories.

So now assuming that it?s a done deal..  we are going to save updates to
individual pages as one file for display rather than html, why did we choose
PDF rather than a graphic file like a JPEG?  Well for one thing,   I would
be interested in what the actual process is for converting a web page to one
graphic file like a JPEG.  Would I need to print out the webpage to hard
copy, then scan it as a jpeg file? I have Netscape, Explorer, and
Application Extender and on none of these browsers do I have an option to
convert a page to a graphic file (or perhaps I do and don?t know about it).
 But even if we could, the size is important to us because we email many of
our documents around, often to places where there are no T1 lines or fast
downloads.  I am no expert by any means, but I do know that pdf files are
easily created by hitting the print button, and can be converted to text if
need be.  I also know that when we do this, the jpeg converted to a pdf file
takes up considerably less space.  For example, I just converted a 709K jpeg
file into a 178K pdf file a few minutes ago.    I used Acrobat full version.
For emailing files around this is very important.  I think your concern
about obsolete software and file formats is a valid one, however.  But I
also know that pdf is text based and can be converted, and pdf files can
also be converted to bitmaps.. pretty basic graphic file, so perhaps that at
least has something going for it.

Finally, I have to disagree that if we?re interested in moving around or
storing just one file, then all we then need is the text, and why save the
image at all.  Pages are like brochures.  They have graphs, photographs
which describe the content, content which describes attached photos, all
kinds of other graphical information on them that a researcher would need to
make sense of the page.

 I think it?s quite difficult to explain in this kind of forum all of the
decisions that went into our database management, digital imaging system,
and our website as it also requires some understanding of our hardware,
software, and management system, not to mention organizational structure!
I?d be most happy to talk to people about our system if you?d like to give a
call.

I?m sorry for the length of this, but I warned you!

Joan Lowe
Assistant Archivist
American Friends Service Committee
(215)241-7042

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