Kind of wild that the internet is not the “information superhighway” as they used to call it, the internet is actually the library of Alexandria, but it is always burning.
Over half the links cited in US Supreme Court cases are broken, the content is either just gone or lost.
There is so much that is just… gone and lost.
we’re the late roman empire but with worse record keeping and no cool architecture
The hardest part about upkeeping digital records is that each time an url is changed, whatever was linked to that source needs to be updated. Firstly, no one informs anyone that the url was changed so they don’t know it needs to be updated. Secondly, whoever the records manager/digital archivist is likely has no time to do it due to understaffing and other priorities.
Which is why all things sourced online should be put into pdfs and embedded in the page, therefore you don’t have to rely on urls. It is a lot easier to re-embed a pdf than find the new url.