IDCC27 Workshop 6: Curating chaos

The Data Rescue Project (DRP) formed in February 2025 as a grassroots volunteer community during a moment of urgency to enable the rapid-response capture of thousands of datasets from US federal websites in response to various actions of the federal government. DRP required extensive coordination and a structured curation workflow to ensure rescued datasets were thoroughly documented and as complete as possible.

This workshop will begin with providing context about the project and the challenges we continue to face. We will then turn to our dataset rescue process and curation workflow. Attendees will be guided through a hands-on walkthrough of our curation workflow, built on the Data Curation Network's CURATE(D) Framework and incorporating preservation tools such as ICPSR’s Data Lumos. Regarding metadata, critical given how difficult it can be to trace a dataset back to its original repository once it has been removed or relocated, attendees will learn about the infrastructure powering our data rescue tracker and portal. We will close by discussing future directions, both for the Data Rescue Project and for data rescue efforts more broadly. We will invite feedback from attendees on a draft toolkit designed to support organizations in rapid-curation efforts.

Participants will leave with practical tools and procedures for curating and managing rescued datasets, and will have contributed their own knowledge and experience to resources built by and for the community.

This workshop assumes no familiarity with data rescue, data curation, or the Data Rescue Project.

Participants will

- Identify the elements of the Data Rescue Project curation workflow and apply those to a chosen dataset.

- Recognize the technical and subjective decisions in the metadata workflow.

- Evaluate the Data Rescue Toolkit and propose changes to make it a more impactful resource.

Target audience: data librarians, data curators, digital preservationists, open data fans.

8:30 - 9:00 Registration

9:00 - 10:00 - Introduction to the Data Rescue Project & the data rescue workflow

10:00 - 10:30 - Break

10:30 - 11:00 - DRP Tracker/Portal and metadata (bio break 10 min)

11:00 - 12:00 - Toolkit discussion and feedback

12:00-13:00 Lunch