Several of my most recent data visualization posts have been about data that is at risk of disappearing. Sometimes policy disappears data and sometimes the budget cuts that come from policy disappear data.Recently, I’ve had a personal brush with disappearing data. In my case, it wasn’t statistical data, it was the link to a written work that served as the evidence I had been published. I’ve been dabbling with freelance writing outside the typical site selection and economic development channels, and providing links and clips to your work is an important practice.
I knew Public Broadcasting budget cuts had impacted decimated a digital magazine affiliated with Minnesota Public Radio called Next Avenue. A fellow writer alerted me to the fact that the links to our work were not longer functions, in my case a link I used on my website’s publication clips page.
Enter the Wayback Machine. I was lucky, when I entered the original URL of my piece I found three archived copies of the work, which means I could replace the broken link with one from the archive.
My story is a small one, and hardly a tragedy. I wish I could say the same for all of the disappearing data. Check your links. Maybe you’ll get lucky too.
(Also published on my Substack)