Persistence and decay of web citations used in theses and dissertations available at the Sokoine National Agricultural Library, Tanzania

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dc.contributor.authorSife, Alfred S.
dc.contributor.authorBernard, Ronald
dc.date.accessioned2015-11-10T09:42:40Z
dc.date.available2015-11-10T09:42:40Z
dc.date.issued2013
dc.description.abstractA study was conducted to examine the persistence and decay of web citations in theses and dissertations available at the Sokoine National Agricultural Library. Specifically, the study assessed the accessibility status of cited URLs, identified error messages and top level domains of inaccessible URLs, and calculated the half-life of web citations. Eighty-three theses and dissertations that were dated between 2007 and 2011 were stratified according to their years of publication and randomly selected for the study. These gave a total of 15,468 citations of which 1,487 (9.6%) were web citations. The findings show that a total of 862 (58%) web citations were inaccessible. The 404 File Not Found error message was the most (92.7%) encountered and the .com domain had the greatest number (28.2%) of missing URLs. The average half-life for the URLs cited in theses and dissertations was 2.5 years. The study findings therefore indicate that many web resources cited in theses and dissertations available at SNAL had disappeared fromn their original locations. Collaborative efforts are thus required from various stakeholders in order to reduce the problem of URL decay.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://www.suaire.sua.ac.tz/handle/123456789/673
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherInternational Journal of Education and Development using Information and Communication Technology (IJEDICT),en_US
dc.subjectWeb citationsen_US
dc.subjectURL persistenceen_US
dc.subjectDissertationsen_US
dc.subjectURL decayen_US
dc.subjectThesesen_US
dc.subjectTanzaniaen_US
dc.titlePersistence and decay of web citations used in theses and dissertations available at the Sokoine National Agricultural Library, Tanzaniaen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dc.urlhttp://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu//viewarticle.php?id=1606en_US

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