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WELCOME!

Data Rescues 2025

In response to political threats to social, environmental, health, and personal data, the University of Washington Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums, and Archives (CALMA) in collaboration with Seattle-based BKS Studio, is hosting a series of DATA RESCUE efforts. Modeled after the 2016-2017 DataRescue movement that responded to hostile conditions towards environmental and climate science data, these ad hoc digital archiving volunteer events invite community members to apply their technical skills and social values in response to new threats to important data.

While Data Rescues can focus on any type of at-risk public and government data, many have focused on environmental issues given documented threats and modifications by recent political agendas.

This Gitbook is a knowledge base and living document for the 2025 Seattle-based Data Rescues.Open to public suggestions and contributions, this is a living document that is created informed by documentation and literature from the 2017-2018 Data Rescues and by community-informed brainstorming discussions.

The following webpages include:

• Background information on the history of Data Rescue efforts
• Guide on How To Start contributing to Data Rescues
• More detailed instruction on contributing to each Task Workflow
• A growing list of Learning Resources (readings and tools)
• Contact information to connect with wider community on local, national, and international levels

Community is invited to comment and suggest ideas and updates to this site. By submitting Change Requests through the Gitbook interface. More on how to submit updates here.

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Let’s get started! How would you like to get started?

I’m new to Data Rescues → Read a bit more about the background to understand why, when, where, how on this movement

I’ve rescued data before → First, look through our Collecting Scope page for the Seattle Data Rescues vision then move to contribute to community efforts

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