We’ve all experienced it: opening a bookmarked website or clicking on a link and getting a not found message. The ability to quickly create, move, and delete content on the internet can be both good and bad. For many librarians, and archivists in particular, this is mostly a bad thing. The deletion of web content was the problem that led the Harvard Library Innovation Lab to develop Perma.cc. Perma.cc is a web archiving service that helps authors, publishers, and scholars create permanent links to online sources cited in their work.

Recently Perma.cc got a 2015 Webby Award for their work. “Libraries are in the forever business,” Harvard Library Innovation Lab Director Kim Dulin said in a news release. “We developed Perma.cc to allow our users to protect and preserve their sources, no matter where they originate.”

Which brings us back to link rot. What can you do to prevent “not found” messages on your website? The article by Ernie Smith of Associations Now that highlighted the work by Perma.cc gives some great tips for preventing link rot. Check it out now!