Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

HTTP  and HTML are the reigning champs in terms of delivering content from the Web to your computer, typically though a Web browser. Content and data available over HTTP could generally be categorized to be mostly within the surface web. This, however, only constitutes a small portion of what content is available on the complete Web. Some protocols, such as FTP, are no longer supported by browsers and accessed by way of more specialized programs. Modern formats, such as IPFS , also exist but have limited adoption and often still require external software. While content available over these non-HTTP protocols is still "on the Net", the extent to which it is archived remains murky. A Trip Down Internet Lane Originally, I was inspired to write this blog post because I was exploring different representations of content on the web I remembered a gem from my younger days on the Internet. That gem was the ASCII Star Wars animation that you could watch over your terminal by ty...

On July 13, I saw this on Twitter: On Monday, doctors, nurses and researchers will lose access to a trove of medical data, as the Trump Administration shuts down the National Guidelines Clearinghouse. See our piece today, by our Senior Investigator @j0ncampbell , in @TheDailyBeast : https://t.co/Qz1tkRIQIM — Sunlight Web Integrity Project (@SunWebIntegrity) July 12, 2018 There are two US government websites in danger, the National Guideline Clearinghouse ( https://www.guideline.gov ) and the National Quality Measures Clearinghouse ( https://qualitymeasures.ahrq.gov ). Both store medical guidelines. Both will "not be available after July 16, 2018". According to the linked Daily Beast article above: Medical guidelines are best thought of as cheatsheets for the medical field, compiling the latest research in an easy-to-use format. When doctors want to know when they should start insulin treatments, or how best to manage an HIV patient in unstable housing — even somet...