A study by Pew Research Center states that "38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later."
Perma.cc is a free online tool that enables you to keep a record of a specified webpage so that you will not run into the broken link problem down the road. The archived webpage has a unique URL (Perma Link), e.g., http://perma.cc/9265-T4NB. When you cite the webpage using its Perma Link, readers will be able to see the archived webpage even if the original is no longer available online. The video below provides more information about Perma.cc.
Faculty, students, and staff of the University of Chicago can request a free Perma.cc account for academic or research purposes by contacting the Center for Digital Scholarship.
To use Perma.cc to archive a webpage, you need to:
Perma.cc will store the content of a specified webpage in a record (Perma Record), and generate a Perma Link for it. When the archiving is completed, Perma.cc will show you the Perma Record and its link.
All Perma Records are preserved in the Perma.cc collection. If you would like to delete a Perma Record, you have to do that within 24 hours.
In case Perma.cc is unable to capture the content of a webpage, it will display a notification about it and allow you to upload an image of the webpage instead.
This FAQ page provides additional information about Perma.cc. For issues related to copyright and web archiving, refer to this document.
You can manage Perma Links in the following ways:
Details about these topics are available from this page.
Perma.cc accounts are made available at no cost to users who are currently affiliated with UChicago to generate persistent links and to archive webpages for academic or research purposes. For anyone not (or no longer) affiliated with UChicago, these resources may be of interest:
Wayback Machine users may find this post and this follow-up post helpful. Additionally, the METRO Library Council in New York City has produced a webinar series about web archiving in general.