Michael L. Nelson

NASA, OPM Launch NASA Force to Recruit Top Talent for US Space Program - NASA The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and NASA announced NASA Force on Wednesday, a dedicated talent track within the US Tech Force initiative

WTF is this and why didn't they want all the top talent they've been firing from NASA centers for the last couple of years www.nasa.gov/news-release...

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

1/10

The @InternetArchive x @GrayAreaOrg Trillionth Webpage Commissions bring new net․art to life from the Archive’s collections.

Rodell Warner’s "Ghosts of the Internet Archive" creates generative “ghosts” from Web 1.0, layering lost materials.

More ⤵️
blog.archive.org/internet-arc...

#Wayback1T

Promotional graphic for an online book talk titled Searches. The layout features muted gray and cream tones with collage-style images. Text reads: “Book Talk. February 26th, 10am PT / 1pm ET. Online.” It invites viewers to join a conversation with author Vauhini Vara about her book Searches, in conversation with Luca Messarra, exploring how technology fulfills and exploits human desires for understanding and connection. The left side includes two portrait photos of the speakers and an illustration of a stack of books.

Slide featuring a still-life painting of flowers, pastries, nuts, and tableware arranged on a table. Text at the top reads: “‘Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age’ by Vauhini Vara,” with a note identifying her as the author of The Immortal King Rao and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Faded background text discusses how the image metaphorically represents the relationship between technology, AI, and human experience.

📢 TOMORROW!

Learn how tech & capitalism shape human creativity in SEARCHES: SELFHOOD IN THE DIGITAL AGE w/ Vauhini Vara & Luca Messarra.

🎙️📖 A LIVE #booktalk you won’t want to miss.

📅 Thurs Feb 26, 2026
🕙 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET
📍 ONLINE
🎟️ www.eventbrite.com/e/future-kno...

@vauhinivara.bsky.social

The thing that's being discussed tonight? NOT the Internet Archive. It's another web archive that people have believed is a Russian project/asset for a long time. (Archive[.]today)

Nonetheless, it's a very important collection, much of which is not duplicated elsewhere.

This incredible story underscores, amongst other things, the need for trust and transparency in arching tools, and for web archiving toolchain to be fully open source and archives to be verifiable.

Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today, starts removing 695,000 archive links If DDoSing a blog wasn't bad enough, archive site also tampered with web snapshots.

The headline does not convey how completely batshit this story is. The Archive Today (archive.ph etc) admin weaponized the site's captcha to attack a blogger who wrote about them and *altered archived screenshots* as part of the attack.

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Preserving The Web Is Not The Problem. Losing It Is. Recent reporting by Nieman Lab describes how some major news organizations—including The Guardian, The New York Times, and Reddit—are limiting or blocking access to their content in the Internet Ar…

Wayback Machine director Mark Graham pushes back on unfounded claims from media organizations that the Wayback Machine is a backdoor for AI scraping.⁠
⁠
Read more via @techdirt.com 🔗 www.techdirt.com/2026/02/17/p...

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.

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...

The State of Social Media #Archiving (A New Research Report From the @flickrfdn.bsky.social) www.flickr.org/a-new-resear... #socialmedia #archives #libraries

Scholarly Communication: Deconstruct & Decentralize? YouTube video by CNI: Coalition for Networked Information

Framed in scholarly comm terms, but see also: youtu.be/o4nUe-6Ln-8?...

screenshot of P2PDS, an app that enables archival consent interactions on atproto, and executes backup/replication of account data using peer-to-peer protocols. built w/ node.js and Helia/libp2p and Tauri.

thinking about mutual aid for open social data

experimenting with consent-driven social archiving/hosting

what are the foundations for collective communication when the company servers go dark?

and can we start from that place?

use businesses as needed after the fact?

lots of questions.

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.

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...

A leading American research lab is slated to lose its critical supercomputing facility, according to a letter released by the National Science Foundation.https://cnn.it/3MoF7zU

America Is Losing the Facts That Hold It Together The Trump administration is erasing the country’s shared understanding.

The CIA shut down its World Factbook. Graham: "This is different from the [Trump] administration’s assault on truth... It’s a series of steps that by design or in effect block access to data, and in doing so erode the concept of a shared frame for all Americans." www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

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

2022-09-28: Using Web Archives in Disinformation Research The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.

"Using Web Archives in Disinformation Research"
by @weiglemc.bsky.social @webscidl.bsky.social

ws-dl.blogspot.com/2022/09/2022...

2023-02-26: Animating Changes in Webpages, Featuring George Santos's Biography The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.

"Animating Changes in Webpages, Featuring George Santos's Biography" @lesleyelisabeth.bsky.social @webscidl.bsky.social

ws-dl.blogspot.com/2023/02/2023...

2022-08-04: Web Archiving in Popular Media II: User Tasks of Journalists The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.

see also: "Web Archiving in Popular Media II: User Tasks of Journalists" by @lesleyelisabeth.bsky.social @webscidl.bsky.social

ws-dl.blogspot.com/2022/08/2022...

Logo of the Internet Archive WayBack Machine, in black and red text on a white background.

Journalists don’t just report from the web anymore—they report on it 🕵️‍♀️

Learn 9 Ways Web Archives Are Used In Digital Investigations on how reporters track deleted pages, uncover hidden connections, document edits & follow what vanishes,

Read FOLLOW THE CHANGES ➡️ blog.archive.org/2026/02/02/f...

For pioneering roles in online search engines, and in digital preservation and open access to knowledge provided by the Internet Archive If you want to solve hard problems, have hard problems. — Brewster Kahle

Congrats to @brewster.kahle.org for being named to the Computer History Museum 2026 Fellows!

"For pioneering roles in online search engines, and in digital preservation and open access to knowledge provided by the Internet Archive"

More info ➡️ computerhistory.org/2026-fellow-...

Thanks to Drs. Yinlin Chen & Bill Ingram for the opportunity!

It will be an updated version to the talk I gave at the DPC Members Meeting in Nashville last April:

www.dpconline.org/events/event...

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...

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

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.

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...

"A look back at 20 years of Archive-It"

Shout out to Kristine Hanna (AIT) and Kris Carpenter Negulescu (IA) for all their help, support, and leadership back in the day.

@archive.org @waybackmachine.bsky.social

archive-it.org/blog/a-look-...

Mitigating the Impact of #AI Bots; "Dealing With #Bots: A COAR Resource for Repository Managers" & More Headlines www.infodocket.com/2026/01/20/a... #libraries #LLMs @coar-repositories.bsky.social

How Wikipedia Will Survive in the Age of AI (With Wikipedia’s CTO Selena Deckelmann) YouTube video by 404 Media

Here's our interview with Wikipedia's CTO on how the crucial resource will survive in the age of AI

www.youtube.com/watch?v=39LR...

2026-01-14: Reflections on the Teaching Experience The Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University.

Last semester, PhD student Kritika Garg @kritikagarg.bsky.social taught 433/533 Web Security as an asynchronous class. She offers her lessons learned in her most recent blog post:

ws-dl.blogspot.com/2026/01/2026...