Data Rescue Activities

In response to federal government take-down orders of websites containing openly available datasets, the UChicago Libraries has been backing up and preserving datasets that researchers—and the public—use to evaluate the state of our nation. You can find preserved backups of these datasets in our institutional repository under the Federal Government Datasets collection. Please check Knowledge at UChicago frequently, as datasets are being ingested daily: https://knowledge.uchicago.edu/collection/Federal%20Government%20Datasets?ln=en

On a national level, data librarians and curators—including those at UChicago—have been leading organizing efforts to identify at-risk datasets, act as a clearing house for preserved datasets and where they are hosted and facilitating preserving data through data rescue hackathons. This effort, called the Data Rescue Project, is an invaluable resource for finding, assessing, and accessing federal datasets.

To date, we have backed up over 20,000 datasets and almost 8 TB of federal data and continue to work towards making them as Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable as possible.

Please contact Lisa Chinn at datasharing@uchicago.edu to request dataset rescue services or for additional information.