This paper maps the national UK web presence on the basis of an analysis of the .uk domain from 1996 to 2010. It reviews previous attempts to use web archives to understand national web domains and describes the dataset. Next, it presents an analysis of the .uk domain, including the overall number of links in the archive and changes in the link density of different second-level domains over time. We then explore changes over time within a particular second-level domain, the academic subdomain .ac.uk, and compare linking practices with variables, including institutional affiliation, league table ranking, and geographic location. We do not detect institutional affiliation affecting linking practices and find only partial evidence of league table ranking affecting network centrality, but find a clear inverse relationship between the density of links and the geographical distance between universities. This echoes prior findings regarding offline academic activity, which allows us to argue that real-world factors like geography continue to shape academic relationships even in the Internet age. We conclude with directions for future uses of web archive resources in this emerging area of research.
翻译:本文根据1996年至2010年对.uk域的分析绘制了英国国家网络存在图,回顾了以前使用网络档案来理解国家网络域的尝试,并描述了数据集。接下来,本文件分析了.uk域,包括档案链接的总数以及不同二级域链接密度随时间变化。然后我们探索了特定二级域(学术次域.ac.uk)内的时间变化,比较了与变量的联系做法,包括机构归属、联盟表排名和地理位置。我们没有发现影响连接做法的机构联系,只发现影响网络中心点的联盟表排名的部分证据,但发现了联系密度和大学间地理距离之间的明显反向关系。这反映了以前关于离线学术活动的调查结果,使我们能够指出地理等现实世界因素即使在互联网时代也继续影响学术关系。我们最后指出,网络档案资源在这一新的研究领域的未来使用方向。