Do universities delete the webpages of professors who die?

[Simfish]

And if they do, have there ever been exceptions? Sometimes, the webpages contain some really valuable content. :(

 

[fss]

Depends on the university.

 

[Antiphon]

Use the Internet wayback machine to get to it.

 

[arildno]

My webpage has not been deleted??

Come to think of it, maybe because I'm not dead yet?
Or that I'm not a professor?

Or possibly because I don't have a webpage?

Many questions, few answers...

 

[Evo]

My webpage has not been deleted??

Come to think of it, maybe because I'm not dead yet?
Or that I'm not a professor?

Or possibly because I don't have a webpage?

Many questions, few answers...

 

[mathwonk]

There do not seem to be current pages for deceased profs at UGA math dept. We have to give our IT guys some kind of break. They are already supporting both active and retired faculty, ... dead ones too? I can't make that case. Some of us are already dead wood.

Harvard math dept's page does have a history link, where you can learn hiow to get copies of all POhD these back to the 19th century, and names of past profs, and even a handwritten copy of a 150 year old text or two, but not web pages of the departed.

 

[arildno]

There do not seem to be current pages for deceased profs at UGA math dept. We have to give our IT guys some kind of break. They are already supporting both active and retired faculty, ... dead ones too? I can't make that case. Some of us are already dead wood.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Old professors never die, they just lose their faculties.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I think the answer is yes. I looked for Newton's web page and couldn't find it. Galileo's is gone too. Maxwell, Einstein, you name it.

 

[mathwonk]

Euclid's page however has a mirror site here:

http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html

In fact Newton does too:

http://www.archive.org/details/Newtonspmathema00newtrich

Galileo:

http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/tns_draft/index.html

Einstein:

http://www.bartleby.com/173/

Maxwell ( and many others):

http://www.antiquebooks.net/readpage.html#maxwell

 

[jtbell]

I wonder what Einstein's Twitter feed would have been like.

 

[peak86]

I believe this answer is yes.

 

[Borek]

Jokes aside, sometimes this is a problem. I remember at least one very good resource that was lost when the chemistry professor retired (no idea about whether she still lives or not). Her pages were just deleted from the university (or was it college?) site. Wayback machine is of no use, as it remembers only pages with static links - so it is possible to see copy of the main page, but a huge collection of interesting and safe home/classroom experiments perished.

 

[Vanadium 50]

But whose job is it to preserve this? About once a year I get an email saying "there's a new server/configuration/template" and something needs to be changed. If the professor is no longer employed, who does this work?

 

[Evo]

But whose job is it to preserve this? About once a year I get an email saying "there's a new server/configuration/template" and something needs to be changed. If the professor is no longer employed, who does this work?

Can't the Universties catalogue the pages? Hopefully professors aren't dying off at a high rate and the IT department could archive them?

 

[Vanadium 50]

That answers the question, "it's the IT department's job". But now comes the other shoe - the IT department gets its budget cut. Who do they get rid of?

 

[Evo]

That answers the question, "it's the IT department's job". But now comes the other shoe - the IT department gets its budget cut. Who do they get rid of?

Is it really that hard? If the site is already hosted on their server, why not just leave them up? I see old threads here "archived". Would it be any different? Someone is taking the time to go and delete the pages. Obviously, I don't do websites, so if someone does, could they say what it would take "technically" to keep the pages on the server? Or is it a matter of legality?

 

[TylerH]

An example of an undeleted professor's web page: Texas' Edgar Dijkstra archive, http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/

 

[Vanadium 50]

If they left the servers alone, that would work. But some places seem to like to change things. Often. It seems that every time a new dean is hired, it's time to change the web pages.

 

[jtbell]

It seems that every time a new dean is hired, it's time to change the web pages.

Or when they hire a new head of the PR department, or a consultant who tells them they need a spiffier Web site with a new content-management system.