We believe in supporting the fundamental role of science in sound government policy. Please help us preserve vulnerable federal climate, environmental, and transportation data.

We need programmers, data scientists, and science enthusiasts! Please bring your laptop and be ready to learn.

Ready to make a difference? We recommend that volunteers fit one of the following criteria:

• Familiar with Federal Agency websites and have strong writing skills

• Comfortable browsing the web and have great attention to detail

• Have strong front-end web experience and enjoy research

• Skilled technologist with a programming language of your choice, comfortable with the command line, or experience working with structured data

• Have data or web archiving experience, or have strong tech skills and an attention to detail

• Have experience working with scientific data (particularly climate or environmental data) or with metadata practices

• Interested in hosting a DataRescue event in your area

Volunteers must read the overview section of the DataRescue workflow to learn more about the different roles when signing up.

1. Surveyors – Identify key programs, datasets, and documents on Federal Agency websites

2. Seeders/Sorters – Identify important URLs and ensure they can be crawled by Internet Archive

3. Researchers – Inspect "uncrawlable" list and investigate how it can best be harvested

4. Harvesters – Capture "uncrawlable" data, requires substantial technical expertise

5. Checkers/Baggers – Perform quality assurance on dataset and verify content according to standards

6. Describers – Creates a descriptive record in the DataRefuge CKAN repository

7. Hosts – Learn how to host a DataRescue event for your organization

Learn more about the Environmental Government Data Initiative (EDGI) and Data Refuge.

Can't make it but still interested in contributing? Please donate to Feed Our #DataRescue Volunteers today so our amazing volunteers can stay fueled throughout the day!

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We are extremely grateful to Northwestern University for hosting our event. Thank you so much for supporting us and our cause!

Please contact organizers Patricia Basuel or Anne Zald for questions or more details.