Visualizing Webpage Changes Over Time
The development of prototypes for a set of open-source visualization tools to ease navigation of web archive collections. Partners include the New York Art Resources Consortium and Columbia University Libraries.
As web archives grow in importance and size, techniques for understanding how a web page changes through time need to adapt from an assumption of scarcity (just a few copies of a page, no more than a few weeks or months apart) to one of abundance (tens of thousands of copies of a page, spanning as much as 20 years). Old Dominion University, New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), and Columbia University Libraries (CUL) will jointly research and develop tools for efficient visualization of and interaction with archived web pages. We will develop 1) a tool for visualizing web page changes in arbitrary web archives, 2) a plug-in for the popular Wayback Machine web archiving system (for better support of the functionality otherwise available via #1), and 3) scripts for easy embedding of the visualizations in live web pages, providing tighter integration of the archived web and live web. This work will be informed and in support of CUL's and NYARC's existing web archiving activities.
Participating institutions:
Old Dominion University Research Foundation (Norfolk, VA) - Applicant/Grantee
Columbia University Libraries (New York, NY) - Participating institution
New York Art Resources Consortium (New York, NY) - Participating institution