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Perma.cc Guide & Policies: Explanation, Policies, and Best Practices

 

   Perma.cc

Perma.cc is an archival tool that helps scholars, journals, courts, and others create permanent records of web sources cited in opinions and scholarly articles.  Perma captures what the page looks like at a given moment in time, regardless of later changes.  Perma also has the ability to hold uploaded screen captures if there is a barrier to the normal archiving process.  Citation can be made to the archival copy, preserving the artifact even if the original page is subsequently altered or removed. 

Explanation

The University of South Carolina Law Library has an institutional account with Perma.cc.  This means that faculty and journals affiliated with the USC School of Law can have 'organizations' associated with the institutional account.   An organization can be a single faculty member or can include the faculty member's research assistants, at the faculty member's discretion.  It can also be a student group such as a law journal where the members are the editorial board of the journal. 

The roster of the associated organizations is controlled by the account's "registrars" who have the power to create associated organizations and add and remove users.  Registrars are automatically members of all of an account's organizations.  The USC law library's registrars are some of its librarians.

When a user creates a Perma.cc link, Perma.cc archives the content of the referenced web page and generates a link to the archived record of the page. Regardless of what happens to the original source, the archived record will always be available through its Perma.cc link.

See the individual instruction pages for more information on how to use Perma.

Bluebooking

Bluebook Rule  18.2.1(d) encourages archiving Internet sources in order to prevent link rot, using both the Perma Link and original URL in the citation.  A citation would look like this: 

Charles P. Pierce, This Cannot Be the Way Occupy Ends, Esquire: Pol. Blog (Nov. 17, 2011), http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/occupy-wall-street-violence-6575448 [http://perma.cc/48VC-ZS62].

 

UofSC Law Library Global Perma Policies

Perma.cc Policies

  1. The library's institutional Perma.cc account is for the use of our faculty, staff, students, and journals.
  2. Users operating under our institutional account do not need to worry about deleting any archived sites unless they want to. 
  3. Faculty and journal editors are responsible for their Perma.cc content and should consider carefully who should be given access to the 'organization's' files.
  4. Faculty and journal editors are responsible for keeping the rosters of their organizations up-to-date and should disassociate any users who should no longer be affiliated with the organization.
  5. The library's Perma.cc registrars will periodically review the roster of users and remove anyone who is no longer faculty, staff, or student of the law school as more fully explained on the specific tabs for that user type.  Additionally, the library's Perma.cc registrar may remove any users who have not used Perma.cc in over three years.
  6. As long as a link is public, it will continue to be visible regardless of the separation or removal of users from an organization or institutional account. However users, once separated, will only have access to their personal folders and, prior to separation, may wish to make note of any Perma URL's they wish to remember.
  7. Users can move links from organizational folders to their personal folders, but should only do so if the link was mistakenly placed in the wrong folder originally.  Moving the link out of the organizational folder prevents other organization users from being able to access it.

Best Practices

  • Use the folders ability to organize your Permalinks.
  • Always check your Permalinks to make sure they captured what you want, especially if you batch upload a list.
  • You can't archive something behind an authentication wall; a screen capture will need to be uploaded to Perma and a link made to that image.

The Memento Project

The Memento Project is an effort to preserve the contents of the web going back in time.  With Memento, you are able to access a version of a Web resource as it existed at some date in the past, by entering that resource's HTTP address in your browser like you always do, and by specifying the desired date in a browser plug-in.  Click on the link below to learn more about it.

The Law Library Perma Registrars

The law library's registrars are: