Presentation Type
Lightning Talk
Date
2025-11-20
Description
The U.S. government is one of the world’s largest publishers of data and research, with offices and agencies like the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, USAID, and the Department of Education playing key but distinct roles in collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information across various fields. During the first Trump administration, groups began a data preservation effort, but the scope of the challenge was much smaller. Since January 2025, the scope of the threat has increased. To address the expanding data preservation efforts, a group of data librarians and archivists in February 2025 organized the Data Rescue Project (DRP), a clearinghouse for data rescue-related efforts focused on at-risk public U.S. governmental data. The DRP has operated on multiple tracks simultaneously. We have run our own data rescues, training volunteers to back up datasets on to ICPSR's crowdsourced Data Lumos repository. We have also launched the Data Rescue Portal, a website that tracks data rescues from multiple groups, increasing the findability and accessibility of rescued datasets. Additionally, we are supporting other projects such as the Save our Signs effort to archive National Parks interpretive signs. In this presentation, I will cover the current activities of the DRP and discuss how attendees can get involved to help protect public access to public data.
Keywords
MIRL Symposium, 2025 MIRL Symposium, lightning talk
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © 2025 The Author.
Repository Citation
Bohman, Lena, "The Data Rescue Project: Protecting Public Access to Public Data" (2025). Medical Institutional Repositories in Libraries (MIRL) Symposium. 11.
https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/mirl/2025/program/11
The Data Rescue Project: Protecting Public Access to Public Data
The U.S. government is one of the world’s largest publishers of data and research, with offices and agencies like the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, USAID, and the Department of Education playing key but distinct roles in collecting, analyzing, and disseminating information across various fields. During the first Trump administration, groups began a data preservation effort, but the scope of the challenge was much smaller. Since January 2025, the scope of the threat has increased. To address the expanding data preservation efforts, a group of data librarians and archivists in February 2025 organized the Data Rescue Project (DRP), a clearinghouse for data rescue-related efforts focused on at-risk public U.S. governmental data. The DRP has operated on multiple tracks simultaneously. We have run our own data rescues, training volunteers to back up datasets on to ICPSR's crowdsourced Data Lumos repository. We have also launched the Data Rescue Portal, a website that tracks data rescues from multiple groups, increasing the findability and accessibility of rescued datasets. Additionally, we are supporting other projects such as the Save our Signs effort to archive National Parks interpretive signs. In this presentation, I will cover the current activities of the DRP and discuss how attendees can get involved to help protect public access to public data.