Main Characteristics of Web Materials
The Web is navigated through specialized software, web browsers, whose interfaces are hypertextual, interactive, and multimodal. Web materials themselves are characterized by hypertextuality, interactivity, multimodality, and fluctuation (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013).
Hypertext is considered as the defining characteristic of Web interfaces. It provides a searchable system. Fundamental to hypertext is the links between objects being searched, known as hyperlinks, which connect various Web resources. Although the concept of hypertext started with the work of Ted Nelson in the 1960s, the Web gave hyperlinks a global reach, facilitating, for example, multiple routes between resources, both with a given site and between sites. Hyperlinks operate both spatially and temporally, as new connections may be added over time. Especially important for the humanities, hyperlinks establish relationships within a work or between different works. They are also fundamentally different from free text searches, as hyperlinks limit these searches, and are therefore more goal-oriented. Hypertext was initially used to organize hierarchical relationships in books. However, on the Web, it is now the primary navigation tool for complex relations and hierarchies in source materials that would be inaccessible without this interface (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013).
Interactivity is a large area of study in human-computer interaction (HCI), and the type of interactivity characteristic of digital systems is distinguished from that of other mechanical devices. Interactivity on the Web takes several forms, and includes the ability for readers to comment on a text on a Web page, personal, typed communication between individuals in the form of text messages, forums, instant messaging, and tweets. Further, if appropriate security and access is provided, a web page becomes editable through its source code.
Although communication on the Web is primarily textual, multimodality, and specifically multimodal communication, takes several forms, including images, graphs, and videos (e.g. YouTube format is easily embedded in any website). Multimodality may ultimately become as important as hypertext and interactivity. Websites increasingly employ interactive visualizations and other interactive features incorporated into static HTML web pages and facilitated by multi-paradigm programming languages such as JavaScript.
Fluctuation of digital material is a consequence of the hypertextuality and interactivity of the Web. Because of the ease with which Web materials are edited, they may become combined, mixed, and placed into new contexts, in which new genres originate. For instance, simple texts migrated into Facebook posts, which subsequently migrated into tweets (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013).
These four characteristics are generally found in “born-digital” materials, which are materials that are digital from the outset, and not originally analog, physical materials, such as print books, that were subsequently converted to a digital format. However, Web materials can be distinguished from other digital materials as they contain a specific interface which cannot be separated from the materials themselves. In this way, these digitized materials are accessible only through their interfaces. The interfaces are not formally part of the source materials, but are defined by those performing the archiving researchers who choose a specific digitization strategy (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013).