[Bessig] Fwd: Preserving open government data: Data Rescue event this weekend at University of Colorado

[Anne Wilson]

The task of tracking the availability of datasets is a great idea!!  That would be useful information.

One nit - When I visited the Data Refuge page I noticed that one criteria for categorizing a dataset as being ‘removed' is the requirement for a login.   However, logins should not be considered barriers to free data.   Usage is one of the few somewhat objective measures providers have for assessing the value of a dataset, in an age where there is barely any funding for supporting data centers.     It is not unreasonable to ask that if you are going to use data you somehow get tallied as doing so, so the provider can show they are providing something of value.

How much information to gather is another question…

Anne

From: Bessig on behalf of "bessig at lists.esipfed.org<mailto:bessig at lists.esipfed.org>"
Reply-To: Cathy
Date: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 at 9:46 AM
To: "bessig at lists.esipfed.org<mailto:bessig at lists.esipfed.org>"
Subject: [Bessig] Fwd: Preserving open government data: Data Rescue event this weekend at University of Colorado

Not to be too annoying, but why are they having a hackathon to get the data? They can just ask for it. Data that has not been preserved is likely behind firewalls and on local storage devices. Accessing them in a government system is illegal. Also, even if you were to get it, you would probably not be able to make sense of it. If someone asked for help getting data, we would help them in our group. And for free!

NCAR already archives an enormous amount of data. It is doubtful that is going anywhere. And it is well documented. Other institutions around the world already archive public data from the US.

The real issues with data include data that has not been fully processed and made available. This includes data that is on tape, paper, or cd, etc. Or data that was recorded but not processed and documented. Some of that is worth saving and may be at risk with less funding but a hackathon won't help. And, as a scientist, data streams that are stopped (observing systems) are much more of an issue than saving already public data. This is a particular issue for climate where long, consistent records are needed. The various hackathons out there make it sound like data will be fine but it won't be.

Cathy
________________________________
From: "Neal McBurnett via Bessig" <bessig at lists.esipfed.org<mailto:bessig at lists.esipfed.org>>
To: bessig at lists.esipfed.org<mailto:bessig at lists.esipfed.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2017 9:17:08 AM
Subject: [Bessig] Preserving open government data: Data Rescue event this weekend at University of Colorado

As experts with data, we know that having access to data is the first requirement. But we face a risk that critical environmental data may disappear from the public domain, for political reasons.

The folks at Data Refuge (http://www.ppehlab.org/datarefuge) are organizing a hackathon event this weekend Feb 18-19 in which volunteers will be trained to search for federal data that hasn't been preserved yet and help do so, partnering with repositories at places like the Internet Archive, datarefuge.org, and a consortium of major research libraries.

Who knows what important and interesting data you may run across?

Sign up for the event, to be held at CU Boulder's beautiful Law Library, at

  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/data-rescue-boulder-tickets-31995427184

Learn more at

 https://www.facebook.com/dataRescueBoulder/

End of Term Presidential Harvest 2016
 http://digital2.library.unt.edu/nomination/eth2016/about/

This is not the first time that there has been an End of Term Web harvest.  See previous ones at:

 http://eotarchive.cdlib.org/

Cheers,

Neal McBurnett                 http://neal.mcburnett.org/
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