Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

. @WebSciDL celebrates 20 years of #webarchiving & @internetarchive w tacos and @djspooky CDs! #IA20 pic.twitter.com/AFb3qUiuzz — Michael L. Nelson (@phonedude_mln) October 26, 2016 The Web Science & Digital Library Research Group celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the Internet Archive with tacos, DJ Spooky CDs, and a series of tweets & blog posts about the cultural impact and importance of web archiving.  This was in solidarity with the Internet Archive's gala which featured taco trucks and a lecture & commissioned piece by Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky).  Normally our group posts about research developments and technical analysis of web archiving, but for #IA20 we had members of our group write mostly non-technical stories drawn from personal experiences and interests that are made possible by web archiving.  We are often asked " Why archive the web? " and we hope these blog posts will help provide you with some answers. Shawn blogged...

Image is taken from  Wikipedia Indonesia and Australia are neighboring countries that, just like what always happens between neighbors, have a hot-and-cold relationship. The History has recorded a number of disputes between Indonesia and Australia, from East Timor disintegration (now Timor Leste) in 1999 to the Bali Nine case (the execution of Australian drug smugglers) in 2015. One of the issues that has really caused a stir in Indonesia-Australia's relationship is the spying imbroglio conducted by Australia toward Indonesia. The tension arose when an Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald published an article titled Exposed: Australia's Asia spy network and a video titled Spying at Australian diplomatic facilities on October 31st, 2013. It revealed one of Edward Snowden 's leaks that Australia had been spying on Indonesia since 1999. This startling fact surely enraged Indonesia's government and, most definitely, the people of Indonesia. In...

Internet Archive & Libyan newspapers logos Colonel Gaddafi ruled Libya for 42 years after taking power from King Idris in a 1969 military coup . In August 2011, his regime was toppled in the so-called Arab Spring. For more than four decades, media in Libya was highly politicized to support Gaddafi’s regime and secure his power. After the Libyan revolution (in 2011), media became freed from the tight control of the government, and we have seen the establishment of tens if not hundreds of new media organizations. Here is an overview of one side, newspapers, of Gaddafi’s propaganda machine: 71 newspapers and magazines  All monitored and published by the Libyan General Press Corporation (LGPC)  The Jamahiriya News Agency (JANA) was the main source of domestic news  No real political function other than to polish the regime’s image  Publish information provided by the regime  The following are the Libyan most well-known newspapers which are all publ...

I’m currently teaching the undergraduate CS 462 Cybersecurity Fundamentals course which is delivered online using a combination of Blackboard and ODU’s Distance Learning PLE (personal learning environment). Although I’ve taught both online and on campus for many years, I was curious as to which institution initially helped to trigger the transition from physical campuses to the virtual environments used today. While people are paying a lot of attention to MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course) these days due to the sheer size of their enrollment, online learning has been around for quite some time. In the 1990s and 2000s, distance learning using the Internet was embraced by many universities seeking to include alternative modes of instruction for their students. I happened upon this interactive infographic created by a team of Ph.D.’s and NASA scientists at Post University  which depicts “ the Evolution of Distance Learning in Higher Education .” One milestone in the infogr...

On December 12, 2008, an Urdu blogger  Muhammad Waris reported an issue in Urdu Mehfil about his lost blog that was hosted on UrduTech.net . Not just Waris, but many other Urdu bloggers of that time were anxious about their lost blogs due to a sudden outage of the blogging service UrduTech. The downtime lasted for several weeks which has changed the shape of the Urdu blogosphere. Before diving into the UrduTech story, let's have a brief look into the Urdu language and the role of the Urdu Mehfil forum in promoting Urdu on the Web. Urdu is a language spoken by more than 100 million people worldwide (about 1.5% of the global population), primarily in India and Pakistan. It has a rich literature, while being one of the premier languages of poetry in South Asia for centuries. However, the digital footprint of Urdu has been relatively smaller than some other languages like Arabic or Hindi. In the early days of the Web, computers were not easily available to the masses of the ...

Source: http://www.masrawy.com/News/News_ Various/details/2015/6/7/596077/أسرة-الشهيد-أحمد-بسيوني -فوجئنا-بصورته-على-قناة-الشرق-والقناة-نرفض-التصريح I remembered his face and smile very well. It was very tough for me to look at his smile and realize that he will not be in this world again. It got worse for me when I read his story and many others who had died defending the future of my home country, Egypt, hoping to draw a better future for their kids. Ahmed Basiony, one of Egypt’s great artists, was killed by the Egyptian Regime on the January 28th, 2011. One of the main reasons that drove Basiony to participate in the protests is filming police beatings to document the protests. While he was filming, he also used his camera during the demonstration to zoom on the soldiers and warn the people around him so they take cautions before they had gunfire. Suddenly, his camera fell down. Basiony was a dad for two kids: one and six years old. He has been loved by everyone who knew hi...

Shortly after beginning my Ph.D. research with the Old Dominion University Web Science and Digital Libraries team, I also rediscovered a Hampton Roads folk music non-profit I had spent a lot of time with years before.  Somehow I was talked into joining the board (not necessarily the most sensible thing when pursuing a Ph.D.). My research area being digital preservation and web archiving, I decided to have a look at the Tidewater Friends of Folk Music (TFFM) website and its archived web pages ( mementos ).  Naturally, I looked at oldest copy of the home page available, 2002-01-25.  What I found is definitely reminiscent of early, mostly hand-coded HTML: tffm.org 2002-01-25 23:57:26 GMT (Internet Archive) https://web.archive.org/web/20020125235726/http://tffm.org/ Of course the most important thing for most people is concerts, so I had a look at the concerts page too (interestingly, the newest concerts page available is five years newer than the oldest home pag...

Web Archives perform the crucial service of preserving our collective digital heritage. October 26, 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the Internet Archive , and the United States presidential Election will take place November 8, 2016 .  To commemorate both occasions, let us look at the 2008 and 2012 US General Elections as told by Web Archives from the perspectives of CNN and Fox News. We started with three news media - MSNBC, CNN and Fox News in order to capture both ends of the political spectrum.  However, msnbc.com has redirected to various different URLs in the past  (e.g., msnbc.msn.com, nbcnews.com) and the result is that the site is not  well-archived. Obama vs McCain - Fox News (2008) Obama vs McCain - CNN (2008) Obama vs Romney - Fox News (2012) The archives show that the current concerns about voter fraud and election irregularities are not new (at least on Fox News, we did not find corresponding stories at CNN). This Fox News p...