Date of Award
Summer 2008
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Computer Science
Committee Director
Michael L. Nelson
Committee Member
Kurt Maly
Committee Member
Steven J. Zeil
Committee Member
Mohammed K. Zubair
Committee Member
Simeon Warner
Abstract
Digital preservation of theWorldWideWeb poses unique challenges, different fromthe preservation issues facing professional Digital Libraries. The complete list of a website’s resources cannot be cited with confidence, and the descriptive metadata available for the resources is so minimal that it is sometimes insufficient for a browser to recognize. In short, the Web suffers from a counting problem and a representation problem. Refreshing the bits, migrating from an obsolete file format to a newer format, and other classic digital preservation problems also affect the Web. As digital collections devise solutions to these problems, the Web will also benefit. But the core World Wide Web problems of Counting and Representation need a targeted solution.
As the host of web content, the web server is uniquely positioned to assist in the preservation of the resources it serves. It both knows the resources it has, and knows what kind of resources they are. This dissertation presents research in which preservation functions have been integrated into the web server itself. The CRATE Model defines a method for addressing the Counting Problem and the Representation Problem using existing web server-compatible technology. A series of experiments which evaluated this approach are presented, along with a technical review of the MODOAI web server module which acts as the preservation agent. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated by a quantitative analysis of its use in a commercial web testing environment.
Rights
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DOI
10.25777/jr7m-6g71
ISBN
9780549753667
Recommended Citation
Smith, Joan A..
"Integrating Preservation Functions Into the Web Server"
(2008). Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Dissertation, Computer Science, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/jr7m-6g71
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/computerscience_etds/22