micro.nnov.ru is the website of the Nizhny Novgorod Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology named after Academician I.N. Blokhina. The footer of the home page carried the address "603950, Nizhny Novgorod, Gruzinskaya St., 44," the phone number (831) 433-76-55, fax (831) 434-17-71, and the mail address micro@sinn.ru[2]. According to our census, the first web-archive record of the domain dates to 4 April 2003, with eighty such records in total; the site's content stopped changing in 2012 and survived in that form until the last snapshot of 2021.

Early version: one long essay

The snapshot from 6 August 2007 shows the home page under the heading "Nizhny Novgorod Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology named after Academician I.N. Blokhina," followed by a continuous historical essay on the institute's activity, at the time still under the jurisdiction of the Russian Ministry of Health[1]. The page was laid out in KOI8-R encoding and signed with two lines: "Development and design: Eagle ©" and "Site support: M. Lomunova"[1].

The essay traced the institute's history from 6 September 1929, when a decision of the Nizhny Novgorod Regional Executive Committee established the Regional Sanitary-Bacteriological Institute on the basis of the provincial sanitary-bacteriological laboratory and Pasteur station that had existed since 1919; in 1933 it became the Regional Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology[1]. The war years formed a separate thread: a production department opened in 1940, and from the autumn of 1941, as the home page stated, "the Gorky NIIEM turned out to be the institute producing bacterial preparations that was closest to the front," and over the first year of the war the range of preparations produced grew from four to eighteen items[1]. Further milestones were listed: an infectious diseases clinic from 1958, buildings for 100 beds in 1976, the functions of the All-Russian Taxonomic Center from 1978, the state collection of lactobacilli from 1993, the Volga Region AIDS Control Center from 1989, and the name of I.N. Blokhina, conferred on the institute in 1999[1]. The staff at the time numbered 187 employees: 8 doctors of science, 3 professors, 31 candidates of science, and 2 Honored Physicians of the Russian Federation[1].

The 2007-2012 version

By the early 2010s the home page had become a fuller institute website, signed "Site development and design by Lomunova M.A., 2007-2012"[2]. In the header the institute was now named differently — "Federal Budgetary Institution of Science ... of Rospotrebnadzor" — and the staff, still 187 employees, looked denser: 9 doctors of science, 6 professors, 36 candidates of science, and 1 Honored Physician of the Russian Federation[2].

The menu was long and thoroughly "institutional": "About the Institute," "Chief Epidemiologist of the Volga Federal District," "Contact Information," "Site Search," "News," "Institute Structure," "Services Offered," "Developments and Patents," "Dissertations," "Theoretical Materials," "For the Practicing Physician and Specialist," "Book Shop," "Young Scientists at the Institute," "Guest Book," "Vacancies," and a news subscription form[2]. A separate block listed nine laboratories — from molecular-genetic methods of infectious disease surveillance and viral hepatitis epidemiology to microbiocenoses and probiotic design, cellular immunology and immunochemistry[2]. The news feed carried six items from 2012: a regional meeting on 10 April on software for recording, analyzing, and monitoring infectious disease incidence in the Volga Federal District; the 13th International Medical Forum, held in Nizhny Novgorod on 10-12 April; an order awarding staff on the occasion of the sanitary-epidemiological service's 90th anniversary; and congratulations to V.Yu. Talaev on being awarded the title of professor[2]. At the bottom were links to Rospotrebnadzor and its department for Nizhny Novgorod Region, and between the copyright line and the address stood the number 132040840 with no explanation[2].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site entered our census of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet through the directory nn.ru, where it was listed as "Nizhny Novgorod Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology named after Academician I.N. Blokhina" and stood with a zero rating. It left no notable trace in audience measurements: in the surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru counter the address micro.nnov.ru does not appear (more on the rating itself in the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating), and in the results table of the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day vote its domain does not appear either[4].

How it stopped

In the left-hand column the site itself listed the date "Last updated 28.08.2012"[2]. After that the home page did not change: the snapshot from 9 January 2016[2] and the snapshot from 13 May 2021[3] match word for word, from the last news item to the copyright line; more than five years passed between them, and the news on the page remained stuck in 2012. The last snapshot captured in our sample is dated 13 May 2021[3]; at the time of the census the address micro.nnov.ru registers as a parked or blank page.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2021 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)