aqua.sci-nnov.ru is the address of the website of the Volga State Academy of Water Transport in Nizhny Novgorod: under the academy's name, the address was listed in the nn.ru category directory, with the description "Departments, faculties, information for applicants." In early Web Archive snapshots the page at this address was titled "Academy of Water Transport"; in later ones — "Redirect." By 2016 the same address served the website of the Nizhny Novgorod River College named after I. P. Kulibin — a subdivision of the federal state budgetary educational institution "Volga State University of Water Transport"[1], and by November of that same year — only a service redirect page[2].
The river school's website
A snapshot from April 8, 2016 caught the school's website at this address. The footer stated: "Site created: 06/26/2003," last updated on April 3, 2016, license No. 2084 dated October 24, 2011[1]. The menu expanded into the sections "About Us" (with the subsections "History," "Contacts and Management," "Our Partners," "What Cadets Are Made Of"), "For Applicants" ("General Information," "A Word of Guidance," "From the History of the Correspondence Department"), "For Cadets" with "Practical Training," "Our Life" ("Our People," "Our Groups," "Our Poetry," "Letters to Us," "Photo Album," "Memoirs"), "I. P. Kulibin" with the page "The 'Water-Walker' Was Never Given a Chance," and "Documents" with educational standards and syllabi[1].
The school presented itself as "the first educational institution in Russia, founded in 1872 to train water transport specialists," and noted that in 2012 it had marked its 140th anniversary[1]. The news section carried an order dated July 1, 2015 renaming departments: the radio-electrical engineering department became the operations department, and the "inland waterways operation and ship power plants" department became the electromechanical department; each department retained its assigned secondary vocational specialties, among them "Navigation," "Inland Waterways Operation," "Operation of Ship Electrical Equipment and Automation Systems," "Operation of Ship Power Plants," "Economics and Accounting (by industry)," and "Transportation Organization and Management (by mode)"[1]. The same page announced an open house on May 18, 2016 at 3:00 p.m. and posted the documents for the 2016 admissions campaign, while the "Our Life" line featured a historical quest on the Battle of Stalingrad, a patriotic song contest, and the unveiling of a memorial plaque to V. P. Malyshev[1].
Contacts listed on the page: Nizhny Novgorod, Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street; accessible by bus and shuttle taxi to the "Vodnaya Akademiya" ("Water Academy") stop, or by tram No. 2 and trolleybus No. 1 to the "Rechnoye Uchilishche" ("River School") stop[1]. The school's phone numbers were (831) 436-14-43 and 419-77-54, with the VGUVT general office handling certificate requests at (831) 419-78-58[1]. The mail of the deputy head and of the methodological office was on the institution's own domain (vgavt-nn.ru), while all correspondence with visitors went to the site administrator's mailbox outside that domain — river-school@narod.ru[1].
Alumni board
Most of the 2016 home page was taken up not by official material but by alumni notices looking for classmates: blocks headed "Class of 1992," "1983," "1981," "1969" (two separate appeals), "1968," "1966," "1958," "1955" — with names, company and platoon numbers, personal phone numbers, and invitations to meet[1]. The administration promised to provide a venue for a class reunion, leaving the organizing itself to the alumni[1].
A separate section was addressed to alumni of the war years: the site's editors asked for information about cadets who had fought, and promised to create a page for each of them[1]. The same section carried two search requests from relatives — about a prewar graduate, a native of Vasilsursk, missing in action, whose last letter had come from Sevastopol before the city fell, and about a 1950 graduate whose grandson was trying to establish which vessel his grandfather had trained on[1]. Another section, "For Those Who Remember," collected material for a memorial book about a former cadet who had died in 2013[1]. Memoirs and photographs from past graduating classes, sent in by visitors, filled out their own sections of the site[1].
Place in the Nizhny Novgorod The Internet
The address belonged to the sci-nnov.ru domain. In the ranking summary of Counter.nn.ru, on which the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating is built, the academy's site shows a score of 34.94 with zero votes cast; it entered the study's field of view through the nn.ru category directory. Judging by these figures, the departmental site of the educational institution held no notable place among participants of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet: it served purely functional needs — orders, admissions documents, and correspondence with alumni.
How it closed
By November 7, 2016 the address no longer served the home page but a service stub: "An attempt at unauthorized access has been detected. This server is only accessible at 'http://vsuwt-distance.ru'," followed by a message about an automatic redirect with a "Continue" link[2]. According to the inventory of snapshots compiled by the encyclopedia, the Web Archive captured the address 45 times; the address's lifespan is dated 1998–2017, with the last snapshot on July 17, 2017. A check run by the encyclopedia found the address dead.
Sources
- web.archive.org — Home page, April 8, 2016 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Redirect page, November 7, 2016 (archive)