Librarian
Data Rescue & Archivist Organizations
- Data Rescue ProjectThe Data Rescue Project is a coordinated effort among a group of data organizations, including IASSIST, RDAP, and members of the Data Curation Network. Our goal is to serve as a clearinghouse for data rescue-related efforts and data access points for public US governmental data that are currently at risk. We want to know what is happening in the community so that we can coordinate focus. Efforts include: data gathering, data curation and cleaning, data cataloging, and providing sustained access and distribution of data assets.
The above gallery is a list of "Maintainers" created and maintained by the Data Rescue Project, to keep track of the organizations and involved with data rescue initiatives.
- Internet Archive This link opens in a new windowAnyone with a free account can upload media to the Internet Archive. They work with thousands of partners globally to save copies of their work into special collections. As of February 18, 2025 their archive contains 835 billion web pages, 44 million books and texts, 15 million audio recordings (including 255,000 live concerts), 10.6 million videos (including 2.6 million Television News programs), 4.8 million images, and 1 million software programs.
- Data HoardingDataHoarding.org is an index of resources and archives related to data hoarding, web archival and self hosting. It was inspired by the recent purge of online information by government agencies, corporations and others, and aims to provide easier access to tools and information. The goal is not only to hoard data, but parse and index it as well.
- Safeguarding Research & Culture (SRC)Safeguarding Research & Culture (SRC) is creating an alternative infrastructure for archiving and disseminating of cultural heritage and scientific knowledge. We seek to preserve cultural memory in a way that traditional archives cannot. Together, we can ensure that our cultural, intellectual and scientific heritage exists in multiple copies, in multiple places, and that no single entity or group of entities can make it all disappear.
- Archive TeamArchive Team is a loose collective of rogue archivists, programmers, writers and loudmouths dedicated to saving our digital heritage. Since 2009 this variant force of nature has caught wind of shutdowns, shutoffs, mergers, and plain old deletions - and done our best to save the history before it's lost forever.
- Data HoarderA reddit forum that is coordinating efforts to rescue data.
- MuckRockMuckRock Foundation is a nonprofit, collaborative news site and public resource that brings together journalists, researchers, activists and regular citizens to request, analyze and share government documents, making politics more transparent and democracies more informed. MuckRock provides a repository of hundreds of thousands of pages of original government materials, information on how to file requests and tools to make the requesting process easier.
- Big Local NewsFrom its base at Stanford University, Big Local News collects, processes and shares governmental data that are hard to obtain and difficult to analyze; partners with local and national newsrooms on investigative projects across a range of topics; and makes it easy to teach best practices for finding stories within the data.
- Data Liberation ProjectThe Data Liberation Project is an initiative to identify, obtain, reformat, clean, document, publish, and disseminate government datasets of public interest.
- Coherent DigitalCoherent Digital's mission is to preserve endangered information. For us, this is business as usual—safeguarding public records regardless of changes in government. We believe that access to information is essential for transparency, research, and the public good.
Data Rescue Tools
Reporting & Request Forms
- Federal Data Collection CollaborativeForm created by Big Local News to record data rescue efforts and request help in data rescue efforts.
- Social Explorer Data Rescue ProjectSocial Explorer created a dataset request form to assist researchers who have lost access to a previously public data set or are worried about one vanishing. Rescued datasets will be added to Social Explorer's data library.
- SAFE-Track: Secure Anonymous Federal Evidence, Data and Analysis TrackingThe Data Foundation's SAFE-Track portal provides a secure, encrypted channel for documenting changes to federal evidence and data activities. As a trusted, non-partisan authority on government data and evidence policy, the Data Foundation maintains this platform to systematically understand and analyze impacts on America's evidence infrastructure.
- Data Rescue TrackerData Rescue Project form to inform and update them of any downloaded data or maintainers missing from their lists.
- FOIA Request via MuckRockMuckRock is looking for the inside story of the removal federal government data, with suggestions from you on FOIA requests about federal data removal.
Tools
- See Something, Save Something - 6 Ways to Save Pages In the Wayback MachineInformation on how to save webpages and contribute to the Internet Archive using their tools.
- WebRecorderUse their Archive Webpage tool to record and archive webpages as you browse.
Use their Replay Webpage tool to playback interactive, captured webpages. - ArchiveBoxArchiveBox is a powerful, self-hosted internet archiving solution to collect, save, and view websites offline.
- DigiPress Tools by FunctionList of digital preservation tools organized by function.
- Awesome-DataHoardingList of tools for data/web harvesting
- Awesome Web ArchivingLinks to training, documentation, and tools for web archiving activities.
Checklists & Workflows
- Checklist for USA Federal Data Backups (MIT)This checklist provides steps you can take to ensure the government data you use in your research remains accessible to you and others.
- UW-CALMA Data RescueGitbook by the Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums, and Archives at the University of Washington School of Information describing data rescues and providing a template and workflows for how to organize an event or participate in a data rescue initiative.
- CURATE(D): Checklist for Data Curation (Data Curation Network)An abbreviated version of the Data Curation Network's CURATE(D) process that outlines the steps involved in data curation.
- DIY Web Archiving ZineA mini tutorial on DIY web archiving steps, best practices, and tools created by Tessa Walsh, Ilya Kreymer (Webrecorder); Quinn Dombrowski, Anna Kijas (SUCHO); & Amanda Wyatt Visconti, licensed under CC-BY-NC.
Dombrowski, Quinn, Tessa Walsh, Anna Kijas, Ilya Kreymer, Amanda Wyatt Visconti. “DIY Web Archiving: For the Web (& World) You Care About”. Zine Bakery Bakeshop #2; Version 4; January 30, 2025. Charlottesville, VA, U.S.A. https://zinebakery.com/homemade-zines/bakeshop-2-diywebarchiving
Federal Data Preservation Efforts Webinar
On February 13th, MuckRock hosted an event with organizations that are helping lead the efforts to preserve the public’s data. Presenters included Mark Graham of the Internet Archive; Sarah Cohen of Big Local News; Jack Cushman of the Harvard Law School Library Innovation Lab; and Lynda Kellam, PhD, Secretary of IASSIST, a member organization of the Data Rescue Project.