Preserving Digital History: The CiteCast Project
The internet is often thought to be a permanent archive, yet much of it fades into obscurity over time through broken links and deleted pages. To counteract this, Alexander Nwala from William & Mary is spearheading the CiteCast project, aimed at preserving web resources referenced in U.S. television news. With a $750,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Nwala collaborates with Old Dominion University and the Internet Archive to develop AI models that can detect, archive, and catalog mentioned web pages for future access by researchers and the public.
Nwala, an assistant professor of data science, along with computer science professor Yanfu Zhang, is focused on creating an AI model that detects news-referenced web resources. This infrastructure will help analyze a decade’s worth of U.S. TV news, with the Internet Archive using this data for their WayBack Machine.
This project not only aims to preserve important media resources but also investigates how information flows between television news and the internet, highlighting the significance of digital citations in television broadcasts.
By ensuring that valued web contributions are not lost, CiteCast strives to support future research and enhance public access to historical information, reminding us of the crucial interplay between traditional media and the digital landscape.
