iatp.nnov.ru — a Nizhny Novgorod site of the Internet Access and Training Program, which operated under the heading "Internet Access and Training — IATP — in Nizhny Novgorod"[1]. As the home page stated, the site was "created with the financial support of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State" as part of a program implemented on the territory of the Russian Federation by the representative office of the nonprofit corporation "Project Harmony Inc." (USA)[1]. The Nizhny Novgorod site directory nn.ru described the resource as "training courses and seminars based at the Open Access Center of the Lenin Library" and called on alumni of U.S. State Department exchange programs to network with one another[3]. The page invited questions and suggestions to be sent to pat@osi.nnov.ru, and was signed by Evgeny Patarakin[1]. Web Archive snapshots of the home page span the period from July 20, 2001 to September 6, 2008[1][2].

What was on the site

The snapshot from November 21, 2003 caught the site at its fullest. As the home page stated, "in 2003 the site www.iatp.nnov.ru is home to the project 'Nizhny Novgorod Resources of Collective Authorship'," supporting three alumni communities — "Education," "Ecology," and "The American Experience"[1]. The first hosted a hypertext School Encyclopedia, the second a collectively written account of the Lobachevsky State University Biological Station, and the third American diaries written in 2001—2003 in Boston, Concord, and on the Mississippi[1].

Separate sections included the "Library of Electronic Texts," which in the autumn of 2003 gained new names and a new look, a WikiWiki section that added advice from FLEX program alumni, and the "IATP Chronicles in Nizhny Novgorod" — 56 issues by that point[1]. The site held records on 134 alumni of the BECA programs and, as the home page stated, hoped this information would help them "make friends and cooperate in their home city"[1]. Comments were accepted on two forums: a forum on building network communities, where hypertext technologies and tools were discussed, and a forum "for guests and hosts," about the experience of staying in the USA and advice for future exchange program participants[1]. Some materials had by then been frozen: "Tips on using network resources" and materials from trainings on creating web pages and websites, as the home page noted, "are still kept on the site, but are no longer maintained or updated"[1]. The last-updated mark read November 18, 2003, and the editors referred a description of the technology used to issue 11 of the journal "Internet Education Issues"[1].

A wiki instead of a showcase

By December 2005 the home page had shrunk and turned almost entirely into an account of the wiki: it opened with a description of the "Wiki-Wiki of the 'American Experience' community," tied to the memoirs of alumni of American programs[2]. The page explained the idea this way: "for the WikiWiki, what matters is not individual differences but common situations and patterns that future alumni can go on to use"[2]. The School Encyclopedia and the account of the biological station were now mentioned merely as "other examples of collective network repositories," and the Chronicles were described as a searchable record of the program's events in Nizhny Novgorod for 2002—2004[2]. Of the two forums, only one remained on the page — the one on building network communities; unchanged was the disclaimer that the site's views might not coincide with the position of the U.S. State Department and "Project Harmony Inc."[2].

Its place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the Nizhny Novgorod site directory, the site was listed under "Science and education: Training centers, courses, university preparation"[3]. The directory showed a rating next to each site: in the September 16, 2003 sample, iatp.nnov.ru had a score of 53, against 1,717 for the category leader, the British Council's EducationUK site[3]. How the city's counter worked, and its surviving samples, are examined in the articles Counter.nn.ru and Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating. In the surviving results table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote of 2004, the site does not appear[4].

iatp.nnov.ru was not a major presence in the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, but it occupied a niche of its own: neither commerce nor media, but a site attached to educational exchange programs, where a wiki and collectively written texts were already at work from 2003 on[1].

How it closed

Judging by the surviving snapshots, the site's content stopped being updated before it disappeared: already in 2003 part of its sections had been declared unmaintained[1], and the 2005 page described the Chronicles as a record of events from 2002—2004[2]. The last Web Archive snapshot of the home page is dated September 6, 2008[2]. We have no data on the reasons for its closure or on the domain's subsequent fate: no dossier of life-signs was compiled for iatp.nnov.ru, and no relocation notice ever appeared on the home page[2].

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, category «Training centers, courses, university preparation», 2003 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)