Why do websites disappear?

pageHeaderTitleImage_en_USIn a recent article in First Monday, Dr. Francine Barone and Professors Zeitlyn and Mayer-Schönberger asked why websites disappear, taking with them at times valuable information archives that benefit society. Rather than because of the most obvious reasons – political and legal pressures as well as lack of funding – they discovered that often times the reasons for disappearance of valuable online information archives are combinations of multiple factors, including a shift in interest and focus of the individual who maintained the site, often as a labor of love. Based on this complex dynamic of multiple factors, the article makes a few recommendations what could be done to preserve valuable information archives.