Internet web pages come and go with surprising rapidity. We have all experianced that suprise and then disapointment when a favorite site just dissapears. All that is left is the dreaded 404 file not found error.

Sometimes the author has just moved their site and it will pop up somewhere else. Other times there may have been a problem paying an ISP or registration account and the situation is temporary. But more and more often the author has abandoned the site/page. Sites are abandonded for a number of reasons:

• The author lost intrest.
• The author lost their internet connection (common among students)
• The site was static too long on a "free" hosting service and removed.
• The hosting service went out of business. . .

Whatever the reason these sites all took human energy and thought to create. Often they have valuable information or original ideas. Humanity, civilization as we know it, is a sum of everything that has come before us. Loss of information of any kind, be it a book or a web site is a loss to humanity. It the new cyber era all it takes it the accidental flicker of an electron or the conscious press of a button and thousands of hours of effort can be lost for all time.

There are large scale internet archival programs where groups collect everything they can find on the internet. These are huge undertakings and copyright issues make use of the information problematic.

Small scale is better. Blacksmithing and hand metalworking is a narrow enough topic that we as a community can do something about orphaned web sites.

The trick is to catch the site before it dissapears or the author can no longer be located. When we adopted Emiel's Hotlinx we contacted the author as soon as we noticed the page was gone. He agreed to let us have the page and turned over the login and password to his "abandoned" Tripod account. This was an idea situation. We also adopted the Steelworkers webring under a similar situation.

The deal is, if YOU find them WE will host them. We will adopt any blacksmithing or metalworking page or site with any sort of redeeming value. We can make the contact but its almost impossible to do without an e-mail address. Give us as much information as you can. The old URL, Title, subject, e-mail. Old print outs may have contact information but we cannot afford to "recreate" a site from a printout. We will need the site HTML, graphics and permission from the author. Time, is of the essence! The more time that goes by the least likely it is that the site can be retrieved or adopted. Sites composed of other's copyrighted material are not acceptable.

Are you the author of a site that you are going to abandon? Please contact us.