JCDL 2013 wrap-up

Last week I attended JCDL 2013 in Indianapolis along with Harding students Keith Enlow, Monica Yarbrough, and Daniel Sebastian. It's been four years since the last time I attended the conference, and it was great to see a lot of old friends. Below are friends from my days at Old Dominion University: Johan Bollen (now at Indiana Univ), Michael Nelson (still at ODU), and Martin Klein (now at LANL).

For a very thorough summary of the conference, see Justin Brunelle's blog post. There's some nice pictures here of the hotel and other events. Below I am going to highlight the work that my students and I presented. By the way, the Harding students who attended with me were the youngest attendees at the conference. This was a great experience for them, getting to interact with graduate students and researchers at their first academic conference.

The first day of the conference I presented a short paper that I co-authored with Richard Schneider entitled First Steps in Archiving the Mobile Web: Automated Discovery of Mobile Websites. This was work that Richard did as an undergraduate student in the summer of 2012 in which we try to automatically detect the URL for mobile sites so they can be archived.

The next evening Daniel Sebastian shared his poster Semi-Automated Rediscovery of Lost YouTube Music Videos. Daniel built a Firefox add-on called Volitrax last summer which helps Firefox automatically relocate music videos in YouTube when they are removed.

I manned Heather Tweedy's poster: A Memento Web Browser for iOS. Heather completed the iOS Memento Browser last summer, and I recently completed a new version for Android. The browser allows you to see web pages as they used to look using Memento underneath the hood.

After the conference concluded, we attended the Web Archiving and Digital Libraries Workshop (WADL 2013) which was organized by Ed Fox. There were about 20 of us in attendance, and with this smaller group we were able to have a lot of discussion about the work each of us was doing with web archives.

I gave an introduction into the problem of archiving the mobile web, and Monica followed with her work this summer on building a web service that others could use to find mobile websites. Keith concluded our joint talk with his work on getting Heritrix to archive some mobile sites. Our slides are below.

I really had a great time in Indianapolis. One unique thing I did there was to visit the Star Wars exhibit at the Indiana State Museum. They had all original costumes and models from the movies. It was a really cool exhibit for a Star Wars fan. I just wish my boys could have been there to see it!

Harding campus transformation

Harding is undergoing an extensive physical transformation this summer. When the students return in the fall, things will look quite different. I took a few pictures around campus this morning which I've posted below.

On the east side of campus, the home which housed the former President has just been renovated for Bruce and Ann McLarty, Harding's new President and First Lady.

Moving further west we have the new softball field which is being prepared for Harding's new collegiate women's softball team. The stadium is the first thing you'll see when you drive into Harding's south entrance.

Just a hundred yards further west the new Health Sciences Building is nearing completion. They just started work on the parking lot a few days ago.

Further down the street you can see construction continues on Legacy Park. This is one of my favorite parts of campus because the architecture is beautiful, and it has a vibrant feel to it. The second picture shows the West Married Apartments which are days from being knocked down to make room for the second phase of construction.

Finally, some new construction next to Pizza Hut (south-west corner of campus). You'll never believe what is being built. Could it be a cool new place to hang out? A trendy new restaurant or coffee shop? No, it's another bank. Because 5000 banks within a two mile radius just isn't enough.

Looking forward to seeing all our students again next month!

Android update for Memento Browser

I'm pleased to announce the updated version of the Memento Browser for Android is now available. It's taken me a few months to update the UI, add some functionality, and fix some bugs that lingered in the old version. There are still some things I'd like to improve, but I wanted to get it out there before JCDL 2013 in two weeks where I'll be showing off the iOS and Android versions of the browser.

Please give the app a test-drive on your Android phone or tablet, and let me know what you think.

Update on 7/16/2013

You can now get the Memento Browser from the Google Play Store!