We’ve heard from individuals who aren’t able to attend DataRescueNHV but would like to be involved in the effort to archive federal government data. Here are some suggestions for what you can do to help…
Attend (or organize) another DataRescue
There are upcoming DataRescues happening around the country. These events are typically open to the public, and we’re sure that your interest and expertise would be welcome! You can also learn about organizing a DataRescue event.
Be a “seeder” and nominate data for rescue
Even if you can’t attend an event, you can nominate data for inclusion in the DataRefuge (or for inclusion in other data archiving projects). Take this survey to let DataRefuge know which data sets are important to you. For social science data, consider nominating data for inclusion in ICPSR’s new DataLumos archive.
Or, check out the documentation about “seeding” (one of the DataRescue event tracks) to learn how to review federal agency websites to identify important URLs and determine if they can be crawled by the Internet Archive. Use the EDGI Nomination Chrome extension to nominate URLs to the End of Term (EOT) Web Archive if they are crawlable or to the Archivers app if they require manual archiving.
Be a “surveyor” and help lay the groundwork for future DataRescues
The “surveying” group at a DataRescue event works on developing agency primers. These primers help other DataRescue groups understand the structure of a government agency, the data it gathers/produces, and what is at risk of change or loss from its websites. Surveying work can also happen outside of a DataRescue event! Take a look at the documentation for surveyors to get started.
Stay informed
Keep up with the DataRefuge project and issues related to disappearing data.