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Almost two decades after diagnosing the link rot phenomenon, and in spite of the universal character of the bit rot phenomenon, the need for reminding about these is still valid. This is because it appears that digital device users have become accustomed to them. The bit rot and link rot phenomena describe the inability to access specific contents or the inability to use specific digital resources. This paper aims to answer the question as to whether it is possible to eliminate the link rot and bit rot phenomena from the internet space.

The link rot and bit rot phenomena were characterised based on a review of various source materials, including the academic literature and internet materials.

The phenomena known as bit rot and link rot have already been well researched and described. Research has revealed the reasons for their occurrence, and also offered recommendations on how to minimise their occurrence. In the current digital ecosystem, however, it is not possible to completely eliminate the link rot and bit rot phenomena.

One can forecast that the link rot phenomenon will intensify and the internet resources will be even more unstable, because more and more new, highest-level domains which are purchased are emerging.

The study compares the phenomena of bit rot and link rot, even though they are usually considered separately. Moreover, it presents the terms of “digital bumps”, which cause “digital tsunami”.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the Filipino search engine, Yehey! against what has become the industry standard, Google.

A total of 14 queries were submitted to Yehey! and Google. The top ten sites returned from each were examined for dates created and modified, domain name, the presence of dead or advertising links, the quality of the site as indicated by statements of responsibility and purpose as well as credentials, and overlap.

Despite its promise of providing access to Filipino cyberspace, Yehey! fell short on most of the measures used to evaluate the two search engines.

To date, little research has been conducted on local Asian search engines, despite the growth of internet use in the region.

An overview of the contents and design of web pages of the European national libraries.

The theoretical part features the concepts, problems and guidelines for design related to web sites of national libraries. Based on this knowledge, an expert evaluation was carried out, including a brief overview of all homepages of European national libraries, accessible from the Gabriel server in 2004, as well as a much broader survey of web sites of nine national libraries (Austria, Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Croatia, Denmark, Italy (Florence), Poland, Slovenia, Spain, UK).

The survey shows that European national library web sites do, in fact, have a common core of content and, in large part, follow the design guidelines, but there are still some deviations from the recommendations. National libraries of the economically better developed countries have better web sites in terms of the following guidelines, whereas national libraries of the Eastern and Southern European countries fare slightly worse.

This paper identifies the sites that set the example for other libraries to follow. Also, a list of actual shortcomings of the existing web sites is presented.

The World Wide Web's search engines are the main tools for indexing and retrieval of Internet resources today. Comparison and evaluation of their performance is of great importance for system developers and information professionals, as well as end‐users, for the improvement and development of better tools. The paper describes categories and special features of Web‐based databases and compares them with traditional databases. It then presents a review of the literature on the testing and evaluation of Web‐based search engines. Different methodologies and measures used in previous studies are described and their findings are summarised. The paper presents some evaluative comments on previous studies and suggests areas for future investigation, particularly evaluation of Web‐based search engines from the end‐user's perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate library web sites in Pakistan, to analyse their content and navigational strengths and weaknesses and to give recommendations for developing better web sites and quality assessment studies.

Survey of web sites of 52 academic, special, public and national libraries in Pakistan based on a 77‐item checklist.

Pakistani libraries have developed web sites over the past few years but these are few in number. No directory is available to locate library web sites and no scholarly literature has been written on this topic in Pakistan. No standards for content selection were considered in developing library web sites so they lack uniformity and often miss important features.

This research includes web sites of all types of libraries in Pakistan. Web sites with at least one independent page on a parent organisation's web site are included.

This study is the first of its kind ever conducted in Pakistan. The findings of this paper will be helpful in improving library web sites.

Building a Web‐based e‐library may be the most important thing a library ever does. An important role for librarians in all types of libraries is the planning and/or building of Web‐based e‐libraries. Offers a practical discussion of developing and implementing a collection plan for building Web‐based e‐libraries. The starting point for developing any collection plan is an assessment of the function of and need for an information collection and the audience it will serve. Discusses some guidelines and practical strategies on where and how to find, identify, evaluate and select appropriate Web‐based information resources. Focuses on Web‐based information resources rather than other electronic information resources such as CD‐ROM or fee‐based databases that have been discussed extensively in recent literature.

The purpose of this study is to identify the persistence and decay of uniform resource locator (URLs) associated with Web references. The decaying of Web references is analyzed in relation to their age, domain, technical errors and error codes.

The Web references of the Journal of Informetrics were selected for analysis and interpretation to fulfill the set objectives. The references of all the scholarly articles, excluding editorials and reviews published in the Journal of Informetrics for five years from 2007 to 2011 were recorded in a text file. Later, the URLs were extracted from the articles to verify their accessibility in terms of persistence and decay. The collected data were then transferred into an excel file and tabulated for further analysis and interpretation using simple statistical techniques.

The results showed that of the total 7,409 citations retrieved from 221 articles, 358 citations (4.8%) were Web citations. These Web citations were assessed to find their persistence and decay. The results reveal that 115 (32.12%) Web references were missing or dead. The most common error associated with the missing Web citations was Error 404 Page not found, contributing 60% of the total missing citations, followed by 400 Bad Request Error (35.65%). The domain analysis of missing Web citations depicts that most of the missing URLs were associated with the .gov domain (40%), followed by .edu (29.58%) and .com (26.04%).

The Web references of a single journal, namely, Journal of Informetrics, were analyzed for five years, and hence, the generalization of findings needs to be cautioned.

The URL decay is becoming a major problem in the preservation and citation of the Web resources, and collaborative efforts are needed to reduce the decaying of URLs.

A good number of studies have been conducted to analyze the persistence and decay of Web references, as it is the hot topic of research across disciplines, and this study is a step further in the same direction.

The objective of this research paper is to evaluate websites freely available on the internet from one country – Iran and to provide information about the quality of their content.

General quality criteria were used for the evaluation. These included ownership and authorship, type of websites, purpose and scope of the sites, language, links, domain types, currency/updating of information, accessibility, services and facilities. Thus, in May and June 2004, 328 websites were selected using Yahoo, Google, Lycos, Iran Digest, and A Guide to Iranian Websites, to conduct searches. A check list was drawn up to review the information from the tools.

The research revealed that among Iranian websites providing information on the internet, private sites were much more likely to be of poorer quality compared to sites of governmental organizations.

Because there are no authoritative search engines which are specifically Iranian, the data were collected by using a selection of five search tools over a limited period of time. Using only these search tools, 3735 websites were found. While this paper has surveyed the content of the websites, more research is needed to highlight the nature of the internet infrastructure and its use in this country.

The websites of each country are regarded as a prime national gateway of information. The paper uses other work on evaluating national web presence and gives clear insight into Iran's websites and gives a model for evaluating the national web presence in any one country. Based on the results, national digital strategies can be devised to help make progress towards an effective and high quality national portfolio of websites.