The Hong Kong Government Reports Online (hkgro) website was recently revamped and all the original links (https://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkgro/index.jsp) will redirect to HKU Digital Repository (https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/hkgro)
This causes many problems as the links to PDFs of documents will no longer work, for example:
GN 398, 1888 September 8 (https://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkgro/view/g1888/662275.pdf), a gazette notice for Tai Yuen Street, will automatically be redirected to the new site's main page, thus losing a link to see the document.
But I've noticed an anomaly, the original link to GN 184, 1909 March 19 is gone and is replaced by (https://www.cchu.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/11841.pdf), a website that I've never seen before. (cchu.com)
There are currently 4 ways to find the document again:
- Paste the old link in the wayback machine and see if it has been archived
- Same as the 1st method but with other archiving tools, the chances are slim
- Press the old link, see if it redirects to a website that miraculously saved
- Search on the new digital repository website, but it is time-consuming
I tried to find the document for GN 398, 1888 September 8 on the Digital Repository site. I inserted "Albany Street" into the search but it comes up with some other documents.
Another example is GN 870, 1941 July 18. I searched for "Brown Street" but it returned "Did not match any documents" I clearly remembered typing "Brown Street" when searching on the old website, and the document name should be "Brown Street, etc".
The above example proved that some documents' name have changed, which increases the difficulty to search.
And last but not least, if we found a new link, we had to single handily change the link in some articles or posts.
If you guys have any method to help, please feel free to share it below.
some responses to said search results
Hi EhanCK,
Hope below may help you move forward with this GRO interface.
e.g.
For 1941 GN 870, you may scroll to that year Gazette first (link 1) and look up Brown Street by the search function - I got 2 results found
For 1909 GN 184, from the main page of GRO again scroll to the 1909 gazette; within 1909 (link 2), you may see the date "1909-03-19" beneath, which has breakdowns of 179 to 189.
Think you may get to the one in a few scrolls and clicks.
Not too sure how you somehow get to that personal website (a UK blog) via your web navigation. It is quite unlikely that you were redirected by the hku webnsite.
You may recap your initial url and actions done here, if you are interested to probe. There should be plenty readers here to help out.