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 not the most stable system and have long wanted to move to a more robust tracking system. At our September 9th office hours, we announced the new data rescue workflow for our volunteers! Now volunteers can find a dataset to rescue through our new “Datasets to Rescue” table, described in our new volunteer wiki.
In addition to creating new documentation on this workflow, we have added direct links on our DRP website to make it easier to find and engage with DRP rescue materials (check out the updated navigation!).
Explore the updated documentation and get to rescuing. If you have any questions or suggestions for improvements, you can always reach out to us via email, LinkedIn, Mattermost, or Bluesky post.
Looking ahead:
- We will be rolling out a new volunteer management system to make it easier to remain connected with the DRP and engaged with data rescue efforts. More details on this will be released in the coming months, but in the meantime, sign up for the new volunteer form!
- Join us on Tuesday, October 12 at 12 pm ET/9 am PT for a hands-on Office Hours with our new Metadata Analyst. Learn how we use OpenRefine for data rescue. We will also discuss our new process for volunteers who rescue multiple datasets at once and prefer to create a spreadsheet for bulk upload.
- Join us on Tuesday, November 10 at 12 pm ET/9 am PT for Office Hours with Erin Meyer, Senior Data Project Manager and Project Management and User Support Lead at ICPSR, to discuss how volunteers can help improve metadata on DataLumos.
