What can history tell us?: towards different models of interaction with document histories

Abstract

The current Web is a dynamic collection where little effort is made to version pages or to enable users to access historical data. As a consequence, they generally do not have sufficient temporal support when browsing the Web. However, we think that there are many benefits to be obtained from integrating documents with their histories. For example, a document's history can enable us to travel back through time to establish its trustworthiness. This paper discusses the possible types of interactions that users could have with document histories and it presents several examples of systems that we have implemented for utilizing this historical data. To support our view, we present the results of an online survey conducted with the objective of investigating user needs for temporal support on the Web. Although the results indicated quite low use of Web archives by users, they simultaneously emphasized their considerable interest in page histories.