A Vision for Trustworthy Web Archiving

A PRESENTATION BY Dr. Michael L. Nelson

Online Event via Zoom

Abstract:

Link rot and content drift have always been a part of the web experience: as we share links and create bookmarks, the content at those links often disappears or changes so much that it no longer reflects our original intent.  Increasingly, this phenomena is accelerating, with entire government web sites disappearing or radically altering their content to reflect changing priorities. In this vacuum, alternate archives and data rescue efforts have arisen to replace the content lost., But how do we know the new pages faithfully maintain the content of the pages they purport to replace? In this talk, we explore how a network of accessible, publicly available, independent, interoperable, robust, auditable, cooperating web archives can be used to preserve the web.

Bio:

Michael L. Nelson is a Professor and Eminent Scholar at Old Dominion University (ODU), with a dual appointment in the Computer Science Department and the Virginia Modeling, Simulation and Analysis Center (VMASC).  He is the Deputy Director for the ODU School of Data Science, the Chief Scientist for the Office of Enterprise Research Initiatives, and the co-director of the Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group.  His research interests include the technology, security, and social impact of web archiving.  Prior to joining ODU, he worked at NASA Langley Research Center from 1991-2002, where he developed the NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS). He has been (Co-)PI on over $13M in external funding, (co-)authored over 300 technical publications, and is a co-editor of the specifications for OAI-PMH, OAI-ORE, Memento, ResourceSync, and Signposting.

If you are an individual with a disability and desire an accommodation, welcome! Please email ylchen@vt.edu at least 10 days prior to the event.