Humanitarian Archive Emergency Coalition: Get Involved Remotely!

The DRP has been pleased to be part of a growing coalition concerned about the future of humanitarian archives amid challenges to foreign aid funding. In response to these concerns, a Steering Committee from around the world was convened by researchers at the University of Manchester’s Humanitarian

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New Data Rescue Workflow and Fall Office Hours

Since our earliest days, we have used a Google spreadsheet to track and manage the dataset rescue workflow, ensuring that data identified as at-risk are preserved, curated, and made accessible. The spreadsheet has served us well for 20 months and for thousands of rescues. However, we know it is

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Tracking Censorship in National Parks: An Update from the Save Our Signs team

As censorship of NPS materials continues, the Save Our Signs team has released new resources and a key update to the existing infrastructure to make it easier to understand what has changed. ### SOS Censorship Tracker Through both news reports and before-and-after photos, the SOS team is documenting reported

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DRP Office Hours and New Data Rescue Workflow

We are excited to announce that over the course of this summer, due in no small part to the hard work of our wonderful metadata analyst and volunteer coordinator, we have overhauled our data rescue workflow! While our data inventory spreadsheet served us well, we are now transitioning to a

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Announcing Volunteer Coordinator

Today’s post is an interview with our new Volunteer Coordinator! The DRP is able to offer this position because of the generous support of the Portfolio to Protect Science, a fiscally sponsored initiative of Global Impact, as well as other anonymous individual donors. _We are so excited to_

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Understanding Federal Data Loss and Future Directions

At just about every presentation, webinar, interview, and hackathon, not to mention in-passing conversations and speculative Bluesky posts, we’re asked: “But exactly how many datasets have been removed since January 2025?” As we have stated since the start, this is an impossible question to answer

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New Report Documents Continued Staffing, Leadership Strains at Federal Statistical Agencies

_Below is a guest post from Michelle Crosby and Steve Pierson of the American Statistical Association._ * * * The American Statistical Association (ASA) “FedStat Health” project team recently released its mid-year status report, 2026 Midyear Update: Resources and Leadership Supporting Federal Statistics. As someone who spends every day monitoring,

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Urgent: Oppose NARA Facility Closures

We recently learned that some regional facilities of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) are being targeted for closures, including the ones in San Francisco/San Bruno, CA and Chicago. These facilities hold important records especially to people in those areas. Among the 100,000 cubic feet of documents

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Open for Community Comment: Coalition for Resilient Research Data Infrastructure (CRRDI) Strategic Plan

The DRP Steering Committee is excited about the release of the draft Strategic Plan of the Coalition for Resilient Research Data Infrastructure (CRRDI). DRP Director Lynda Kellam has been working with a committee of experts organized by the Center for Open Science (COS) to develop a strategic plan that promotes

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Announcing the DRP Metadata Analyst

Today’s post is an interview with our new Metadata Analyst! The DRP is grateful to be able to offer this position throught the generous support of the Portfolio to Protect Science, a fiscally sponsored initiative of Global Impact, as well as other anonymous individual donors. _We are so_

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Celebrate Peer Review Week by reviewing together!

To celebrate 2026 Peer Review Week (September 14-18), PREreview is organizing a Review-a-thon: a global event where newly-formed and existing PREreview Clubs synchronously carry out collaborative reviews of preprints and datasets. Our goal is to showcase how human, community-driven peer review can help drive change

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The Great Federal SOGI Data Rescue

During the Trump administration’s first year, sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) measures were widely removed__ from national surveys, programmatic data, and administrative systems. These changes often happened with little transparency, accountability, or evidence-based decision-making. While the removals have largely impacted data collection and dissemination beginning

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Thank you Maggie Levenstein, outgoing ICPSR Director

ICPSR has been an integral partner in the work to back up and advocate for public data. Without ICPSR’s DataLumos, the volunteers of the Data Rescue Project would not have had the infrastructure necessary to make our rescued data accessible. This has been key for the DRP, as

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DRP response to OMB Proposed Revisions

Recent proposed revisions to the Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has drawn a significant amount of attention, and justified ire. This summary of key change highlights just how sweeping these proposed changes are, and how significantly they could shape scientific research in

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A Year of Saving Our Signs

_The following post is authored by Save Our Signs co-founders Kirsten Delegard, Jenny McBurney, and Amelia Palacios._ Save Our Signs launched one year ago on July 3, 2025, in response to the Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” and the related Secretarial

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DRP Receives "Documents to the People" Award

The DRP Steering Committee is delighted to announce (officially!) that the Data Rescue Project has been selected to receive the 2026 ProQuest/GODORT/ALA "Documents to the People" Award. We are honored to receive this award, and are so grateful to all of the nominators. The Government

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Championing Public Data: Recap from IASSIST Keynote

In early June, DRP Director Dr. Lynda Kellam delivered a moving keynote presentation at the annual IASSIST conference. In her presentation, Lynda made the connection between data stewardship roles and civic life. Lynda has kindly made her slides, and a transcript of the presentation, publicly available. But for those who

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How the Trump Administration Wants to Whitewash History at the President’s Site

In spring 2025, the Trump administration targeted all National Park Service (NPS) sites with censorship via Executive Order 14253 and Secretarial Order 3431. These orders have resulted in the censorship of dozens of materials from at least 37 different sites. Collectively, these erasures reveal the broad range of empirical statements

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The Government Just Banned Math (only mildly hyperbolic)

Getting people to care about statistical methodologies is a challenge. Hence the hyperbolic title, but give us a few minutes because what is happening matters for you and your privacy. Last night, Hansi Lo Wang, a correspondent at NPR, reported that multiple pages that mention “differential privacy” or

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Update from ESIP's Repository Resilience Project

At the DRP, we are always excited to amplify our colleagues' efforts. This week, ESIP released its final report on the repository resilience project, which began at the end of last year. They have released the project's resources on Zenodo: * White Paper: Repository Resilience in Practice: Findings

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Guest Post: Data Literacy for Community Action

_Today's guest post is from_ Emily Zoe Mann_, a research and instruction librarian at the University of South Florida Libraries. Read on to learn more about an exciting data literacy initiative she has spearheaded!_ Launched in 2024, Data Literacy for Community Action (DLCA) is a collaborative project created

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Update: Actions to Take to Support Climate Research

After sharing a call to action yesterday regarding the closure of the Ocean Monitoring System, we have since learned that data that have been collected are not currently at risk. The NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) has stated that data previously collected will be maintained, with funding available until 2028

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Most Endangered Historic Places - National Parks and Beyond

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has released their list of 11 most endangered historical sites, which includes sites across the country that are physical reminders of the fight to ensure liberty and justice for all. Among this list are stories of oppression, segregation, physical harm, and family separation -

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Summer Office Hours: (Re)Orientation

If you’re looking for summer plans, we have great news: there are always opportunities to volunteer with the Data Rescue Project! Whether you’re newer to the DRP, a veteran looking for a refresher, or just want to hang out with some fellow data nerds for a

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Two DRP Positions!

We have exciting news!! Thanks to generous funding we are advertising for the following limited term opportunities to work closely with the Data Rescue Project Steering Committee. If you are interested, please check them out! **We are prioritizing applications submitted by May 22.** We are hoping for the work to

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LGBTQ Data Rescue Hackathon

These past few weeks have felt like months, and these months have been years. We’ve taken great solace in the company of data nerds interested in preserving and providing access to public federal data. But we know that LGBTQ+ data is disproportionately affected, especially the loss of data

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New Resource: Federal Data Field Guide

Understanding and navigating federal data can be tricky– for both novices and experts! But there is now a resource to help you understand this complex ecosystem. Through support from the UC Berkeley Executive Fellowship in Applied Technology Policy, federal data experts Denice Ross and Chris Marcum have teamed up

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CDC NHANES Dataset: Rescued Just in Time

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children in the United States conducted by the CDC. The survey is unique in that it combines interviews and physical examinations. This is a very important dataset for health, public

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Humanitarian Archive Risk Census

Our colleagues at the Humanitarian Archive Emergency (HAE) Project have an updated request for our data rescuers! This initiative, based at the University of Manchester, is focused on the global threat to knowledge infrastructure, specifically for humanitarian aid organizations. Decades of materials in digital archives are currently unprotected and therefore

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Guest Post: For When We Put The Pieces Back Together

_Today's post is from Rachel Santarsiero, Director of the National Security Archive's Climate Change Project, and creator of the Disappearing Data Chronology._ * * * “SignalGate happened _when_?!” I thought to myself as I checked and doublechecked my dates. Yes, SignalGate—the political scandal in which

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