Michele Weigle
@weiglemc.bsky.social
Associate Dean (Graduate School) and Professor at ODU (CS, @webscidl.bsky.social, #webarchiving, #infovis), alum of UNC (CS '98, '03) and ULM (NLU '96), and lifelong LSU fan. Also around at @weiglemc@digipres.club
Jian Wu @fanchyna.bsky.social and WSDL @webscidl.bsky.social are on a heater -- we just received official confirmation that our NSF REU site was renewed for a second term. The topic this time is "Human-AI Interaction and Evaluation in Web and Information Systems". ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/08/2026...
2026-08-03: REU Renewal Proposal Awarded by NSF
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
The main conference paper deadline for JCDL 2026 has passed. JCDL 2026 is currently accepting submissions to the following tracks: - Posters and Demos - Panels - Doctoral Consortium Papers - Resource Papers - Undergraduate Research Symposium - Workshop Papers 2026.jcdl.org
Two years ago, my colleagues and I were sued by Stephen Miller's America First Legal. The Hines v Stamos case — built atop a number of false allegations — was a central element of the "censorship industrial complex" myth. Today, that case was dismissed (by a Trump judge in LA). We won.
![UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
WESTERN DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
MONROE DIVISION
JILL HINES ET AL — CASE NO. 3:23-CV-00571
VERSUS — JUDGE TERRY A. DOUGHTY
ALEX STAMOS ET AL — MAG. JUDGE KAYLA D. MCCLUSKY
MEMORANDUM RULING
Before the Court is a Renewed Joint Motion to Dismiss for Lack of Subject Matter and Personal Jurisdiction [Doc. No. 191] filed by Defendants, Alex Stamos, Renée DiResta, the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University, the Leland Stanford Junior University, Kate Starbird, Graphika, Camille François, the Atlantic Council, and Graham Brookie (collectively, "Defendants"). Plaintiffs, Jill Hines ("Hines") and Jim Hoft ("Hoft") (collectively, "Plaintiffs"), filed an Opposition [Doc. No. 207]. Defendants then filed a Reply [Doc. No. 209].
For the reasons set forth, Defendants' Motion is GRANTED.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:h3t5rqlvuaorq42yckpijirj/bafkreiggakmifunn64abigm63tqgz3acksb5neiyr736xtwd7dnfiodzra)
We've uploaded the video for Tuesday's 2026 WS-DL Research Expo -- be sure to check it out if you missed it. @webscidl.bsky.social ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/06/2026...
2026-06-25: 2026 WS-DL Research Expo
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
Michael L. Nelson@phonedudemln.bsky.social · last mo.2026 WS-DL Research Expo Tuesday, June 23, 2pm EDT All are welcome: members, alumni, friends, etc. github.com/oduwsdl/2026... 5 students, 1 from each @webscidl.bsky.social prof, will give a ~15 min summary of their current research. Status updates from profs & alumni too! (zoom link in repo)
Recently, Sawood (ibnesayeed.bsky.social) & I uncovered a tricky web archiving replay problem. An API call several layers of JS deep had superfluous browser size args that would intermittently load the wrong JSON for the archived HTML ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/05/2026... (all images/links are SFW)
2026-05-26: URL Arguments in API Calls Can Cause Intermittent Temporal Violations While Replaying Archived Web Pages
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
What does it take to teach a senior/grad-level database course for the first time? I share my experience teaching CS 450/550 in Spring 2026, a semester that pushed me beyond research into teaching and learning. ✍️ WS-DL blog: ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/06/2026... @webscidl.bsky.social #oducs
2026-06-09: Teaching Database Concepts for Senior Undergraduate and Graduate Students at ODU
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
Excited to share that I passed my PhD proposal defense on April 24, 2026 -- another step closer to finishing my PhD 🎓 Special thanks to my dissertation committee: @weiglemc.bsky.social, @phonedudemln.bsky.social, @acnwala.bsky.social, & Erika Frydenlund for their guidance & support.
Client Challenge
slideshare.net
I've been trying to resolve the cognitive dissonance between "AI-generated summaries are useful" and the backlash that Dr. Fieisler (@cfiesler.bsky.social), myself, and many others felt at the ACM DL briefly making them default over authors' abstracts in December. ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/05/2026...
2026-05-28: If LLMs can write abstracts, what's our job? The Uncanny Valley and Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect in the ACM Digital Library
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
On Thursday, May 14 2026, we held our WSDL gathering at Hank’s Filling Station. It also served as a promotion and tenure party for Vikas Ashok. Himarsha and Skanda brought the future WSDL member (and shared her with others), and former members were there too (Sawood, Yasith, Gavindya).
The 2026 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries will take place on October 13–16 in Dallas, Texas, and the call for papers, posters, and more has also been released:
Home-JCDL2026 -
ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2026 Click to switch › About the Event The ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) is a premier international forum focused…
2026.jcdl.org
🧵 The web is disappearing 🕳️ From Pew: 26% of pages from 2013-2023 are ☠️ A new study in VANISHING CULTURE gives hope: 16% have been restored through the Wayback Machine. 56% are preserved before they disappear. 📚 Read VANISHING CULTURE free from Internet Archive: archive.org/details/vani... ⬇️
"Gone but Not Forgotten: Recovering the Dead Web" Sawood Alam's (@ibnesayeed.bsky.social, @archive.org, @waybackmachine.bsky.social) #WAC2025 presentation. blog.archive.org/2026/04/23/g...
Gone but Not Forgotten: Recovering the Dead Web | Internet Archive Blogs
blog.archive.org
Was Snopes making silent updates to its articles before 2021? [Rating: TRUE] Check out the blog post here: ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/04/2026... @webscidl.bsky.social
2026-04-21: Was Snopes.com making silent updates to its articles before 2021? [Rating: TRUE]
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
Just shared a recap of teaching INFO624 at Drexel this winter. A fast-moving quarter exploring how AI is changing search plus some great student projects and takeaways. log.lab.matkelly.com/info624-2026
Append the LM to the IR
Report on INFO624 Intelligent Search and Language Models at Drexel CCI in Winter 2026 with course topics, student projects, and lessons learned.
log.lab.matkelly.com
The new tool is Reverse TweetedAt, and it's useful for grep'ing or sorting tweet IDs / URLs in a list if a datetime (or range) is known in advance. The original tool was described in 2019 by Nauman Siddique and Sawood Alam (@ibnesayeed.bsky.social) ws-dl.blogspot.com/2019/08/2019...
2019-08-03: TweetedAt: Finding Tweet Timestamps for Pre and Post Snowflake Tweet IDs
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
The first part (left-to-right) of a tweet ID encoded the datetime that it was tweeted. @tarannum44.bsky.social of @webscidl.bsky.social has released an expansion of our early tool, TweetedAt, that takes datetimes of varying granularity and returns a tweet prefix. ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/03/2026...
2026-03-18: Reverse TweetedAt: Determining Tweet ID prefixes from Timestamps
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
"A Glimpse into How #AI Tools Can Enhance the Way We Study Web Archive Content: Challenges and Opportunities" (by Jhon G. Botello, via Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group, ODU) ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/03/2026... #archives #webarchives #webarchiving #GenAI #LLMs #libraries
A longer form discussion about generational loss in web archives. Or, if you prefer, "making copies of copies of copies..." I will give a lightning talk, "The Disintegration Loops", at the Information Stewardship Forum, hosted at the Internet Archive @archive.org ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/03/2026...
2026-03-17: The Disintegration Loops: Generational Loss in Web Archives
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
Hussam Hallak @hussamhallak.bsky.social of @webscidl.bsky.social describes using Google Sheets to do a bulk upload of URLs to the "Save Page Now" service of the Wayback Machine @waybackmachine.bsky.social ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/02/2026...
2026-02-12: How to archive web pages in bulk using the Internet Archive Google Sheets service
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
For this blog post, I summarized @bitarchivist.net, @wilkinson.graphics, and @ilya.webrecorder.net's paper, “High Fidelity Web Archiving of News Sites and New Media with Browsertrix.” @webscidl.bsky.social ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/02/2026...
2026-02-13: Paper Summary: "High Fidelity Web Archiving of News Sites and New Media with Browsertrix"
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
In "Detecting and reconstructing trustworthy edit histories using web archives", I talk about different markers of edit history on webpages and how web archives can be used to verify or refute them. ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/02/2026... @webscidl.bsky.social
I'll be presenting "A Vision for Trustworthy Web Archiving" as part of the Va Tech Center for Digital Research & Scholarship Distinguished Lecture Series. Friday, Jan 30, 2026 10am EST @webscidl.bsky.social It will be on Zoom & registration is free: calendar.lib.vt.edu/event/16230235
Center for Digital Research & Scholarship Distinguished Lecture Series
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...
calendar.lib.vt.edu
Travis Reid @treid803.bsky.social @webscidl.bsky.social summarizes Brenda Reyes Ayala's @brendareyesayala.bsky.social 2025 paper: "Towards a better QA process: Automatic detection of quality problems in archived websites using visual comparisons" ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/01/2026...
2026-01-22: Paper Summary: "Towards a better QA process: Automatic detection of quality problems in archived websites using visual comparisons"
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
The work described in this article was supported by IMLS 🫶 #webarchiving
Travis Reid@treid803.bsky.social · 8mo agoOur JASIST article, "Problems with archiving and replaying current web advertisements", was recently published: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author... @wiley.com Co-authors: Alex Poole, Hyung Wook Choi, Christopher Rauch, @machawk1.bsky.social, @phonedudemln.bsky.social, @weiglemc.bsky.social (1/9)
Our JASIST article, "Problems with archiving and replaying current web advertisements", was recently published: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author... @wiley.com Co-authors: Alex Poole, Hyung Wook Choi, Christopher Rauch, @machawk1.bsky.social, @phonedudemln.bsky.social, @weiglemc.bsky.social (1/9)
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
A win! The Institute of Museum and Library Services (the federal agency that supports the nation’s libraries) has reinstated thousands of grants that had been canceled by the Trump administration, after a federal judge ruled the executive order mandating those cuts was unlawful.
Statement of Agency’s Reinstatement of Terminated IMLS Grants
Statement of Agency’s Reinstatement of Terminated IMLS Grants Washington, DC– Upon further review, the Institute of Museum and Library Services has reinstated all federal grants. This action supersede...
imls.gov
A follow up to the @tarannum44.bsky.social / @webscidl.bsky.social study on Twitter UI generations. This time, it's about acct pages, not just individual tweets. ws-dl.blogspot.com/2025/12/2025...
2025-12-03: Exploring the Different Generations of the UI for Twitter’s Account Pages
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
Michael L. Nelson@phonedudemln.bsky.social · 9mo agoTo study Twitter is to study archived Twitter. And if you're replaying archived pages, you need to be familiar with the different generations of UIs. Tarannum Zaki of @webscidl.bsky.social explores and classifies the different UIs. ws-dl.blogspot.com/2025/10/2025...
The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the federal agency that provides funding for America's libraries, has announced it is reinstating all grants it had previously terminated, including those to libraries and library organizations across the U.S. Read more: https://bit.ly/4496W4V
Trip report for the 2025 ACM Hypertext Conference #HT2025 @acmht.bsky.social @webscidl.bsky.social PhD students Tarannum Zaki, Rochana Obadage, & Dominik Soos and alumni @machawk1.bsky.social & @ibnesayeed.bsky.social attended in September, 2025. ws-dl.blogspot.com/2025/11/2025...
2025-11-12: 36th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (HT 2025) Trip Report
The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.
ws-dl.blogspot.com
