About us

Online history — a short history of the websites of the working group

After 10 years of the existence of A.A.S. we can look back on almost as many years of maintaining our own website online. Here a nostalgic and maybe surprising look back.

The beginnings

The first website was published around 1998 (possibly in late 1997) and was then hosted on a private account of one of the members. The homepage included two language versions (german and english) and basically did not include any pictures. The name of the working group was still "Arbeitskreis" and its english version was "study group". The ambiguity of the names can be explained by the fact, that then the working group was not a registered association yet. Click on the screenshots to enlarge the image.

Getting more professional

Shortly after the release of the above mentioned website a new version was launched (probably around 1999). This time including much more content and a structure which resembles more the current version of this website. This second version of the homepage was probably the version with the most traffic and most hits, as during that time the working group organized the conference "Siberia and the Circumpolar North" and also planned the follow-up publication "Cracks in the Ice".

During the conference and the publication of the book the website proofed to be a valuable tool for distributing information. This website was also the first one to be hosted under the current URL sub-arctic.ac.at, which was established in 2001. On the english only website for the first time detailled CVs of the members and scientific papers were published online.

New design

From the year 2002 a new - more modern - design was in use for the website. Most of the older information was implemented in the new page. It was also a platform to sell the newly published book "Cracks in the Ice". This website was online until the relaunch of the present page with the start of the International Polar Year on March 1st 2007.

Markus Hirnsperger