Link-Checking Analysis Of Selected Museum Web Sites

A survey of the links from the home pages of selected Museum Web Sites has been carried out. The survey makes use of the W3C link checking tool.

A summary of the findings is given in the following table.

You can use the service yourself either by going to W3C link checking tool or by entering a URL in the following box:

The following box can be used to check multiple pages:

Findings

**Table 1: Findings**
	Museum	Home page	Recursive check	Comments	Try It
1	mda	0 broken links	Small number of broken links found	Checked 150 documents in 834.8 seconds.	Page Check Bulk Check
2	24hourmuseum	1 potential accessibility problem	3 documents checked. No additional problems found.	Checked 3 documents in 192.7 seconds.	Page Check Bulk Check
3	Natural History Museum (NHM)	1 broken link and 2 other problems	Small number of broken links and other problems found	Checked 150 documents in 1240.3 seconds.	Page Check Bulk Check
4	National Museum of Science and Industry	0 broken links	0 broken links	Only 1 page checked in bulk test, due to redirect. Checked 1 document in 0.4 seconds.	Page Check Bulk Check
5	Bath Postal Museum	0 broken links	3 broken link and 2 other errors	Checked 48 documents in 293.0 seconds	Page Check Bulk Check
6	American Museum	0 broken links	2 broken links and 1 other problem	Checked 31 documents in 141.7 seconds.	Page Check Bulk Check

The information in the table was collected on 11^th August 2003.

The following table gives details of the Web sites for participants at the workshop.

**Table 2: Findings**
	Museum	Home page	Recursive check	Comments	Try It
1	Association of Suffolk Museums	1 broken link	Several broken links	Checked 7 documents in 62.8 seconds.	Page Check Bulk Check
2	ABL	1 broken link (to CSS file)	1 broken links (to CSS file)	Checked 2 documents in 8.6 seconds.	Page Check Bulk Check
3	BECTa	Several broken links	Several broken links	Checked 1 document in 7.3 seconds.	Page Check Bulk Check

The information in the table was collected on 8^th September 2003.

Please note the following:

Only the entry points have been analysed.
Only an automated analysis has been carried out.
The online version of this page allows the latest findings to be obtained.
Link problems may be due to an intermittent networking problem or downtime of the remote site, and not necessarily due to a permanent broken link.
Many of the apparent broken links on RSC home pages are due to a problems with the JISC Web site which returns an incorrect HTTP error code.

A summary of the findings of the initial survey is given below.

**Table 3: Broken Links**
Broken Links	2	33%
No Broken Links	4	67%