Introduction
The immerging discipline of Web Science is reliant on access to data that records the history of the Web and human activity on the Web. Disparate repositories of web data (e.g., archived web pages, Twitter updates, user-generated tags, and newsgroup postings) are being amassed by researchers and institutions working independently, but sharing such data is difficult due to numerous technical and legal obstacles.
The Web Archive Cooperative (WAC) is an NSF sponsored project whose goal is to provide tools and techniques to overcome these barriers and provide maximum access to repositories of web data in a simplified manner. The purpose of this workshop is to explore a number of open issues and challenges in providing access to and analyzing data in web archives and to present work from ongoing WAC projects. The workshop is open to graduate and qualified undergraduate students who are interested in web archives and Web Science. Financial support covering travel and housing will be provided for a limited number of attendees.
The WAC Summer Workshop is intended for students who are currently enrolled in a graduate program in the United States (see the Call for Participation below). The workshop will feature researchers from Stanford, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Internet Archive, UC Berkeley School of Law, California Digital Library, Microsoft Research and others who will be leading a number of focused talks on a variety of subjects listed below. There will be many opportunities to socialize and discuss potential future collaborations.
Topics examined in this workshop include:
- Preservation of web archives
- Deep Web archiving
- Web archive analytics
- Data mining techniques
- Analysis of social networks
- Legal and social issues related to web archinving and web science
The WAC Summer Workshop will be held at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, on June 29 - July 1, 2012.
Call for Participation
Students who are currently enrolled in a graduate program in the United States are invited to submit an application for a limited number of spots. Graduate students who are studying abroad may also apply, but you will have to pay for your own travel. Undergraduate students who are involved in ongoing web science research projects are also encouraged to apply. Twenty students will receive compensation for two nights of lodging and transportation costs (travel within the contiguous United States). There is no fee for attending the workshop.
Interested applicants can email Frank McCown (fmccown@harding.edu) the following information:
- Your full name
- University you are attending
- Your mailing address
- Your email address
- A summary of your previous, ongoing, or anticipated web science or web archive research
- A paragraph describing what you hope to gain in attending the workshop.
All applications must be received by May 1, 2012. Notification of acceptance will be May 15.
Workshop Organizers
- Frank McCown, Harding University
- Hector Garcia-Molina, Stanford University
- Michael Nelson, Old Dominion University
- Andreas Paepcke, Stanford University