Years ago, I wrote the lectures for my U.S. history class. I linked only to my own files, mostly audio.
Then I got fancier with my History of England and Western Civ classes. I linked out to websites. I thought, what was the point of a class being web-based if there weren’t any hyperlinks? So I linked to informative, sometimes fascinating, websites from every lecture page. Then, when I recorded the audio lecture, I was sure to note where the links were, for the visually impaired.
Now I’m trapped. Many of the links have disappeared, so I’ve asked my wonderful secretary to start Furling them for me. She’s given me pages of links that are nowhere to be found. In one lecture alone (the World War II lecture for England) fully ten sites have disappeared.
I could delete the links from the lectures, but then the audio says links are there that do not exist. I could re-record the audio, which would take hundreds of hours since I have 16 lectures (some multi-page) per class for three classes. I could open every audio file and try to edit out the word “link” (OMG). I could find new links and Furl them (more hours, but that’s what I’ve been doing so far). I could re-conceptualize the whole thing and only link to my own pages on these subjects, deleting the links I don’t use (can you say sabbatical project, children?).
The larger question is: what is an online lecture? If it doesn’t hyperlink, is it rich content? Should I only be linking to my own glossary, as a way of glossing my lecture on the way to eliminating the textbook? This is my material, and it made sense to link out to factual and enlightening information. But now I’m in a hyperlink trap.
Is anything available at the Internet Archive?
Ah, Mr. Peabody’s Wayback Machine! I’ll bet yes. So if I want to keep the links, I could get the old version, then Furl it or link to that URL. Tried it this morning and they were having technical problems at the Archive, but I’ll consider this as a hunting tool for restoring the old sites that were really worth keeping. Thanks, Bryan.
sounds like a hard problem. I dont really understand it fully but I am guessing you need to make the links more loosely coupled. Somehow so they won’t appear in the audio or there is an intermediate link that you have under your control that you can edit.
Maybe you can link to your glossary and put the external links there, where you can update them more easily. Ok i know this is horses bolted, locking doors and so on
I have the same problem all the time setting up courses in Moodle. Trying to share rescources and link to external files becomes a nightmare to maintain over successive years. Maybe web content is by its nature very disposable. It has a lifespan and then it dies or goes out of date and we have to move on.
(Enjoying your blog)
- Eamon