cnti.nnov.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod Center for Scientific and Technical Information (TsNTI), a state institution in Nizhny Novgorod with the address "603000, Nizhny Novgorod, Studyonaya Street, 8"[1]. As the home page stated, the center was founded in 1958, was part of the Russian Association of Information Resources for Scientific and Technical Development of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Russian Federation ("Rosinformresurs"), and was a "representative of the national information system in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast"[1]. The site had been running since 2000 — the copyright notice already read "2000" in a snapshot from early 2001 — and lasted until 2023, surviving a change in the institution's departmental affiliation[1][6].

The reference-service site: 2001

The early home page was laid out as a departmental reference resource. The header repeated the VA-BANK mark twice, and directly below it came the institution's banking details — a settlement account at OAO "GB 'Nizhny Novgorod'," a BIK, OKONKh and OKPO codes, and an INN[1]. The center's functions were listed under three headings: comprehensive information services for enterprises and organizations of all forms of ownership, private entrepreneurs, and individuals; preparing data on the region's scientific-technical and socio-economic development for the Government of the Russian Federation; and forming, deploying, and using state information resources within Nizhny Novgorod Oblast[1]. It was separately noted that, starting in 2000, the Nizhny Novgorod TsNTI became the regional center of the Russian Occupational Safety Information System (RISOT), created to a technical specification of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation[1].

Contacts were given with the area code of the time: phones (8312) 33-19-81, 30-57-63, 34-36-33, fax (8312) 34-36-33, email olga@cnti.nnov.ru[1]. At the bottom of the page was a row of encoding switches — KOI, WIN, DOS, MAC, LAT — typical of the Russian internet of that era[1].

Branch of an energy agency: 2012–2018

By 2012 the site had been reworked and was labeled differently: "Nizhny Novgorod TsNTI — a branch of FGBU 'REA' of the Ministry of Energy of Russia"[2]. The menu consisted of the sections "Home," "News," "Energy Saving," "Databases," "Digital Printing," and "Contacts," alongside RUS/ENG toggles and a toll-free number, 8-800-2000-261[2]. The right-hand column was occupied by a news feed from the Russian Energy Agency — with dates from March 23 to April 5, 2012 inclusive, that is, someone else's federal feed on a regional page[2].

The main substantive asset remained the library of regulatory documents: GOSTs, OSTs, TUs, GESNs, FERs, SNiPs, SPs, PBs, RDs, SanPiNs, and other documents on occupational, industrial, and fire safety, energy, sanitary-epidemiological requirements, construction, and rail transport[2]. As the home page stated, the center had developed "the GostNet program — an information retrieval system comprising about 24,000 full texts of state standards across all branches of industry"[2]. The site also sold occupational-safety certificates, signage, stands, and posters[2].

By 2014 the "News" and "Contacts" sections had disappeared from the menu, while a "Management" section appeared, and services began to be listed as bullet points[3]. Under energy saving, the offerings were development of regional and municipal programs, calculation of tariffs for electric and thermal energy transmission, preparation of tariff dossiers, and calculation of technological loss norms and specific fuel consumption rates with expert review of the calculations[3]; in the 2015 version, energy service with preparation of tender documentation was added to the list, while tariff calculation dropped off it[4]. The operational printing department offered designer services, digital and wide-format printing, post-print processing, thermal transfer, plotter cutting, and scanning and printing of drawings[3]. By this time the contact area code had changed to (831): phone 433-19-81, phone/fax 434-36-46, while the address at Studyonaya, 8 remained unchanged[3].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site lived in the nnov.ru Nizhny Novgorod domain zone and, within the Nizhny Novgorod Internet, occupied the niche of a departmental reference service rather than a public venue. It appeared in neither the Counter.nn.ru tables nor among participants marked by voting for the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day: in the compilation of the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating, TsNTI made it in only through the nn.ru directory, with a zero rating and zero votes. The directory listing described the center's services more broadly than the surviving snapshots do: electronic GOST catalogs, patent-agent services, software systems for equipment and defect tracking, "InforPark," regulatory-technical documentation, and safety-technique and civil-defense posters.

How it closed

The last surviving versions of the home page changed little: the December 2018 snapshot repeats the 2015 page, with a "Vacancies" section added announcing a search for a graphic designer in Nizhny Novgorod[5]. The copyright notice at the bottom of the page was updated manually and lagged behind the calendar: "(c) 2012," "(c) 2014," "(c) 2015" in the snapshot from January 2016, "(c) 2018"[2][4][5]. The web archive recorded requests to the domain into the early 2020s as well, but by then no readable home-page text remained in those copies; the last web-archive snapshot is dated December 7, 2023[6].

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2012 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2014 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2016 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2018 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — List of cnti.nnov.ru snapshots in the web archive (archive)