esc.nnov.ru was the departmental server of the Center for Environmental Safety of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Administration, carrying data on the state of the environment in the region. The copyright notice on the home page dated the site's existence back to 1999[1]. The home page presented it as follows: "Center for Environmental Safety (environmental situation in the Nizhny Novgorod Region)," with the signature "© 1999-2000 Center for Environmental Safety of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Administration" at the bottom[1]. The earliest surviving snapshot of the home page is dated 18 February 2001[1], and the last snapshot of the home page in the web archive is from 1 April 2003, by which point the site already belonged to a different agency[4].

What was on the server

The structure of the home page changed little over the years and was divided into three blocks. The first was "Operational Information," with sections "Surface Water Pollution," "Air Pollution," "Water Levels," "Radiation Situation," "Sanitary-Epidemiological Situation," and "Forest Fires"[1]. The second was "Publications," which included the "Environmental Monthly" and the "Annual Report '99"[1]. The third was administrative: "Text Materials," "About the Server," and "Useful Links"[1].

By November 2001 the set of sections had grown: the menu now included "Satellite Images (SMIS, Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences)" and the "Annual Report '2000," and the copyright had been updated to "© 1999-2001"[2]. At the same time, the credit for who built the site also changed: whereas in February 2001 the home page read "Design and programming - Dmitry Kozlov"[1], it later read "Design and programming - TsEB ANO," the abbreviation of the organization itself taken from the copyright line[2]. A snapshot from 26 September 2002 shows the page unchanged, with no changes to the menu or the copyright[3].

A server on Java, and an apology to the visitor

A notable feature of the site was a persistent notice at the top of the page, which remained in every snapshot from 2001 through 2003. As the home page put it, "unfortunately, at present the server can only be viewed correctly using a browser that supports Java 1.1 (Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher, or Netscape Communicator 4.07 or higher)," and the notice ended with the words "We apologize"[2]. Judging by this caveat, the operational data was rendered by Java applets rather than ordinary markup, and without the right browser the server simply would not open. The apology stood on the home page for at least two years: it is present in the first surviving snapshot from 2001[1] and in the last surviving snapshot from 2003[4].

A place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In our sample the site is recorded in the nn.ru directory's category listing with the description "Environmental situation in the Nizhny Novgorod Region" — that is, it was embedded in the general navigation system of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet rather than existing as a separate departmental island. At the same time, it does not appear in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter, and our data contains neither its ranking position nor its visitor count; more on how this sample is constructed can be found in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

The domain esc.nnov.ru does not appear in the final voting results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day[5]. This is explainable chronologically: by December 2004 the server's former identity had already been gone for almost two years, and by that time it had stopped being captured by the web archive at all[4].

A change of signage, and the end

The last surviving snapshot, from 1 April 2003, catches the site already renamed: instead of the Center for Environmental Safety, the title and copyright now name the owner as the "Committee for Nature Protection and Environmental Management of the Nizhny Novgorod Region," and the credit line has changed to "KOPiUP NO"[4]. The subtitle, however, remained the same — "environmental situation in the Nizhny Novgorod Region"[4].

Along with the signage, the content changed too. The "Satellite Images" section lost its reference to SMIS at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and instead of a list of separate reports for 1999 and 2000 there was now a single entry, "Annual reports on the state of the environment and natural resources in the Nizhny Novgorod Region"[4]. The only news item on the home page announced the "Third International WasteTech Congress and Exhibition on Waste Management – 2003"[4].

After that the trail breaks off: no snapshots of the home page later than 1 April 2003 have survived in the web archive[4], and according to our data the domain esc.nnov.ru is no longer active; we have no information about where its content moved to. What remains of the regional environmental monitoring server are four snapshots of its home page, a table of contents of its sections, and an apology for the fact that the site could not be displayed without Java 1.1.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, February 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, November 2001 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet voting, 2004 (archive)