Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

In collaboration with Dr. Alexander Nwala at William & Mary and Dr. Sawood Alam at the Internet Archive , we ( Himarsha R. Jayanetti , Dr. Michael L. Nelson , and Dr. Michele C. Weigle ) at the Web Science and Digital Libraries (WS-DL) Research Group at Old Dominion University received an award of $750,000 in federal funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) beginning in August 2026. The award supports the project, “CiteCast: Linking US local & national television news to cited web resources” .  The project focuses on identifying and preserving web resources referenced in archived U.S. local and national television news. Television news frequently points viewers to websites, social media posts, and other online resources, but those resources can change or disappear over time. The goal of this is to help connect these references in television archives with the corresponding web resources and preserve them for future research. Figure 1: Example TV ...

AlArabiyah documentary highlighting the two archived copies on the Wayback Machine calendar between which NortaLink website was allegedly removed. Last month, September 2025, AlArabiyah published a documentary in Arabic titled "قادة حزب الله.. قصة الاغتيالات". It investigated the assasinations of Hezbollah leaders and the 2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks . AlArabiyah , a Saudi state-owned international Arabic news and media outlet, is one of the most popular news channels in the Middle East and the world. AlArabiyah is so prominent that former president Barack Obama gave it his first formal interview as president of the US on January 26, 2009. The documentary is published on YouTube under multiple channels/accounts that belong to AlArabiyah including AlArabiyah , AlArabiyah Screen , and AlArabiyah Programs . It investigated Norta Global Ltd, the fake company that sold the explosive electronic devices (pagers and walkie talkies that exploded on September 17th and 18...