What Is Part of That Resource? User Expectations for Personal Archiving.

Users wish to preserve Internet resources for later use. But what is part of and what is not part of an Internet resource remains an open question. In this paper we examine how specific relationships between web pages affect user perceptions of their being part of the same resource. This study presented participants with pairs of pages and asked about their expectation for having access to the second page after they save the first. The primary-page content in the study comes from multi-page stories, multi-image collections, product pages with reviews and ratings on separate pages, and short single page writings. Participants were asked to agree or disagree with three statements regarding their expectation for later access. Nearly 80% of participants agreed in the case of articles spread across multiple pages, images in the same collection, and additional details or assessments of product information. About 50% agreed for related content on pages linked to by the original page or related items while only about 30% thought advertisements or wish lists linked to were part of the resource. Differences in responses to the same page pairs for the three statements regarding later access indicate some users distinguish between what would be valuable to them and their expectations of systems saving or archiving web content.