On Identifying the Bounds of an Internet Resource

Systems for retrieving or archiving Internet resources often assume a URI acts as a delimiter for the resource. But there are many situations where Internet resources do not have a one-to-one mapping with URIs. For URIs that point to the first page of a document that has been broken up over multiple pages, users are likely to consider the whole article as the resource, even though it is spread across multiple URIs. Comments, tags, ratings, and advertising might or might not be perceived as part of the resource whether they are retrieved as part of the primary URI or accessed via a link. Similarly, whether content accessible via links, tabs, or other navigation available at the primary URI is perceived as part of the resource may depend on the design of the website. We are examining what people believe are the bounds of Internet resources with the hope of informing systems that better match user perceptions. To understand this challenge we explore a situation where the user is assumed to have identified a resource by a URI, particularly for archiving. To begin to answer these questions, we asked 110 participants how desirable it would be for web contents related to an identified archived resource to also be archived. Results indicate that the features important to this decision likely vary considerably from resource to resource.