Quick to pick up, easy to use

Knowing how to read URLs is a key investigative technique for finding:

1. The person or organization responsible for the information

2. Whether the information is live or archived

3. Others who reference the information

Reading URLS - Part 2

URLs or Uniform Resource Locators are the Internet addresses of information. Each document or file on the Internet has a unique address for its location.

Here is a dissected URL taken from our URL MicroModule:

Using URL information is particularly helpful in answering several important investigative questions:

Part 2: Is this information from the live Internet or is it archived?

The root site is a clue to whether the site is archived or not.

• In the URL http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/ Guides/Internet/Strategies.html, the first part indicates the page is located on a server operated by the University of California, Berkeley. Edu is a designation for higher education. The lib indicates this is a server for the library.
• The same web page may be found at http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:QNDRL1l00EgJ: www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Strategies.html +search+strategy&hl=en&ct =clnk&cd=1&gl=us Sear. Obviously, this is a much longer URL, but the key is the first part: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache. This is a server where a copy of the page is cached (archived). From the address alone it would be difficult to know that it is a Google server, but the rest of the URL gives away that the query search strategy was used to retrieve this record (see +search+strategy in which the search engine reveals the keywords and operators used). This page is a copy and not necessarily what appears on the live Internet page. Whenever the original URL is embedded in a longer URL like this, it is a sign that the information is archived.

Practice it now:

Is this information live or archived?

http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=radio+telescope& fr=yfp-t-501&u=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_telescope& w=radio+telescope+telescopes&d=G4O0Bv4-PZp7&icp=1&.intl=us

Answer here