Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group

Example: original URI vs. trusty URI Based on the paper: Kuhn, T. , Dumontier, M. : Trusty URIs: Verifiable, immutable, and permanent digital artifacts for linked data . Proceedings of the European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC) pp. 395–410 (2014). A trusty URI is a URI that contains a cryptographic hash value of the content it identifies. The authors introduced this technique of using trusty URIs to make digital artifacts, specially those related to scholarly publications, immutable, verifiable, and permanent. With the assumption that a trusty URI, once created, is linked from other resources or stored by a third party, it becomes possible to detect if the content that the trusty URI identifies has been tampered with or manipulated on the way (e.g., trusty URIs to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks ). In addition, trusty URIs can verify the content even if it is no longer found at the original URI but still can be retrieved from other locations, such as Google's cache,

The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group had a productive 2016, with two Ph.D. and one M.S. students graduating, one large research grant awarded ($830k), 16 publications, and 15 trips to conferences, workshops, hackathons, etc. For student graduations, we had: Justin Brunelle defended his Ph.D. dissertation on February 5, 2016 .  Justin already had a full-time position at MITRE , but not coincidentally he had his choice of significant promotions at the conclusion of his Ph.D. Yasmin AlNoamany defended her Ph.D. dissertation on June 16, 2016 .  Yasmin had several opportunities , and eventually decided on a postdoc fellow position in Software Curation at UC Berkeley, with Dr. Erik Mitchell . Greg Szalkowski completed his M.S. in 2016 as well.  We had hoped to keep him on for a Ph.D., but he's having too much fun traveling the world setting up military communications solutions . Other student advancements: Shawn Jones passed his breadth exam . Alexa

"One of the primary reasons I got hired was because of the [ @WebSciDL ] courses I took at ODU." - @prasanna_sajjan ( @ODUnow , @oducs , MS '16) pic.twitter.com/hGJtRIQ8JY — ODU Computer Science (@oducs) December 5, 2016 Two WS-DL classes are offered for Spring 2017: CS 725/825 - Information Visualization , Dr. Weigle CS 432/532 - Introduction to Web Science , Dr. Nelson Information Visualization is being offered both online (CRNs 26614/26617 (HR), 26615/26618  (VA), 26616/26619 (US)) and on-campus (CRN 24698/24699).  Web Science is offered on-campus only (CRNs 25728/25729).  Although it's not a WS-DL course per se, WS-DL member Corren McCoy is also teaching CS 462/562 Cybersecurity Fundamentals this semester (see this F15 offering from Dr. Weigle for an idea about its contents). --Michael

I'm from Louisiana and used Archive-It to build a collection of webpages about the September flood there ( https://www.archive-it.org/collections/7760/ ). One of the pages I came across, Hundreds of Louisiana Flood Victims Owe Their Lives to the 'Cajun Navy' , highlighted the work of the volunteer "Cajun Navy" in rescuing people from their flooded homes. The page is fairly complex, with a Flash video, YouTube video, 14 embedded tweets (one of which contained a video), and 2 embedded Instagram posts. Here's a screenshot of the original page (click for full page): Live page, screenshot generated on Sep 9, 2016 To me, the most important resources here were the tweets and their pictures, so I'll focus here on how well they were archived. First, let's look at how embedded Tweets work on the live web. According to Twitter : "An Embedded Tweet comes in two parts: a <blockquote> containing Tweet information and the JavaScript file on T

. @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

Collage made from screenshot of local news websites across the US The national news media has different priorities than the local news media. If one seeks to build a collection about local events, the national news media may be insufficient, with the exception of local news which “bubbles” up to the national news media. Irrespective of this “bubbling” of some local news to the national surface, the perspective and reporting of national news differs from local news for the same events. Also, it is well known that big multinational news organizations routinely cite the reports of smaller local news organizations for many stories. Consequently, local news media is fundametal to journalism. It is important to consult local sources affected by local events. Thus the need for a system that helps small communities to build collections of web resources from local sources for important local events. The need for such a system was first (to the best of my knowledge) outlined by Harvard