hcayless
commented
1 month ago It's not a problem to move currently missing content over to the new website. We deliberately chose not to do it in bulk, with the idea that there is a lot of pruning necessary. I'd like to be choosy about deploying redirects, though obviously exceptions can be made.
At the TEI 2024 conference, a paper and discussion following, referenced the TEI Best Practices in Libraries. The link, which is a PURL, is not resolving (ironically). Kevin Hawkins looked into this at the OCLC Purl Service, which we used 10+ years ago experienced a change of management and we have since lost the ability to redirect the PURL.
For now, we would like to point to the web server directory structure, instead, in which these docs used to live. In searching the code base here, I don't really see these older web pages represented. I searched the Way Back Machine and was able to get to the former directory structure:
Assuming the HTML for those pages are still available, we would like to change every reference of "http://purl.oclc.org/NET/teiinlibraries" to the actual web page expressing the Best Practices (see link above).
Below is a bit of history Kevin Hawkins shared with me over email a few days ago while we tried to sort this out, but in the end, we think a direct link to the best practices from the TEI web site is the best way forward. Once confirmed how the web admins want to proceed, we can update links on the wiki and in other repos that we manage for this work.
Thanks, Michelle
In June 2023, I realized that the TEI webmaster had moved the BPTL files (HTML and schemas generated from the ODDs) to a new location but helpfully set up a redirect. So the PURL was still resolving correctly, though only after making two hops (a second redirect). I thought it would be good to update the PURL to point only to the new location (so that it would be more likely to continue working in the long run).
OCLC used to run the PURL service, and back when we worked on the BPTL, I created the PURL and made you a co-owner under a username "mdalmau". However, since then, OCLC turned over the service to the Internet Archive.
I tried to log in through the Internet Archive to administer my PURL, but, as in a thread I will forward to you, they can't find any record of this PURL! It's all strange, especially because at that time the old PURL continued to resolve.
Since then, the TEI launched the new website. I don't know if the BPTL files got moved over, but if they did, they aren't in their most recent location. And so the PURL no longer resolves.
I guess there are three options for how to proceed:
a) Get the current TEI webmaster to set up a server-level redirect from the old URL associated with the orphaned PURL to wherever the webmaster wants to put the files now.
b) Register a new PURL that points to wherever the current TEI webmaster wants to put the files now. Should also update the PURL in places like https://tei-c.org/activities/sig/libraries/ and https://github.com/kshawkin/Best-Practices-for-TEI-in-Libraries .
c) Give up using a PURL entirely and simply point people to a regular URL on tei-c.org where these files will now live. Should also remove mentions of the PURL at https://tei-c.org/activities/sig/libraries/ and https://github.com/kshawkin/Best-Practices-for-TEI-in-Libraries .
I guess solution (a) is a bit brittle because this weird orphaned URL might stop working at some point, and it requires the TEI to continue hosting a redirect indefinitely. Solution (b) would give us a new permanent identifier but will leave future readers confused about why the PURL changed over time. Solution (c) perhaps avoids that confusion by future readers but then leaves us without a permanent identifier. So I'm not sure what to recommend. :(