Editing Admin:ColemanARC Hosting (section)

== Importance of Locally-Hosted Files ==

While the internet is an exceptionally powerful research tool, it suffers from at least one glaring flaw: information may be moved or deleted from its location at any time.  Websites shut down, websites restructure and move content to a different URL, certain content may be deleted altogether and become permanently inaccessible.  In some cases, this is of little consequence.  For example, even if the web address for a certain state park homepage is changed, its reasonable to believe that the page will always be accessible somewhere on a website operated by state government.  However, certain types of information hosted by private parties is always potentially subject to deletion without warning.  Occasionally, these resources may be of particular importance and it is worthwhile to protect this information into perpetuity.

In those cases, I create a digital copy of the resource and store it on the ColemanARC server.  Typically, the digital copy is in PDF format.  ColemanARC cannot directly display PDF files, however the PDF documents are listed and available for download on applicable articles.