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Recent proposed changes to the census collection process threaten the integrity of the data, and therefore all subsequent projects, funding mechanisms, and infrastructures that rely on accurate counting of the American people. As partners of the Hands Off Our Census project, DRP Director Lynda Kellam recently co-authored a post
News
The US Census, conducted once every 10 years, has an importance that is difficult to overstate. The goal of every census is to “count everyone once, only once, and in the right place". While most people probably associate the Census with apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives,
events
Come to October's Office Hour to learn more about the DRP Baserow Tracker and how to use OpenRefine for common metadata tasks!
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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 and Conflict
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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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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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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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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 have
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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 for a wide
Preserving public data
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, analyzing, and
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
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
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 excited
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
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 in
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 our
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
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 Order of the same
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 Documents
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
The following post is authored by Molly Blake, co-founder of Save Our Signs and Social Sciences Librarian at the University of Minnesota. 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
