Axios: Inside the Internet Archive’s race to save federal webpages. “Government webpages on USAID, DEI and gender, among others, simply ‘got wiped out,’ Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle told visitors during a recent tour of their headquarters in the Richmond District.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/22/axios-inside-the-internet-archives-race-to-save-federal-webpages/#DataRescue
Happy Presidents Day.
Two weeks ago, the CIA shut down the World Factbook - a public
domain reference on every country, used by 6 million people
monthly since 1997.
We built a replacement:
https://openfactbook.org
261 countries · Instant search · Country comparisons
Public data should stay public.
#OpenData #CivicTech #OpenSource #PresidentsDay
#PublicDomain #DataRescue
For #LoveData26 week, #ICYMI for 2 free data advocacy zines: "DIY Web Archiving" to protect data (& other online things!) you care about 🔗⬇️, & a #datarescue zine documenting the recently removed Nat'l Park exhibit on the people Washington enslaved zinebakery.com/bakeshop/cen...
DIY Web Archiving | Zine Baker...
Internet Archive Adds Searchable Access to Archived Pages From the CIA World Factbook - Library Journal infoDOCKET https://www.infodocket.com/2026/02/08/internet-archive-adds-searchable-access-to-archived-pages-from-the-cia-world-factbook/
What are the chances this will even spin up? #DataRescue
#retrocomputing
AMSTAT News: Data Rescue Goes Local. “Data rescue is one of the greatest Data for Good success stories of the past year. A team of volunteers and individuals have come together to save data across the US federal system from deletion and dilution, as well as lessen the diminishment of staff, resources, and impact. This outstanding effort continues today with an emphasis on state and local data […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/05/amstat-news-data-rescue-goes-local/
The DRP Steering Committee is in Philadelphia for a retreat, so here's a Philadelphia-based #DataRescue meme
Going to be thinking about more #DataRescue work that can be zineified: both for LOCKSS (lots of copies keeps stuff stafe! free distributed physical copies=definitely part of that) + part of preservation is how many folks stay aware of and read/use a thing
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ghkjnvpwpynrv63kfjxwjsej/post/3mdlplc7ze22x
#censorship #politics #signs #DataRescue
'The Washington Post reported on Tuesday morning that sites across the country have been targeted for erasure...Save Our Signs needs your help to document these educational materials before they disappear.'
Data Rescue Project: SOS! Help Save Our Signs Today . “The Save Our Signs Project team needs your help – and soon. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday morning that sites across the country have been targeted for erasure, including Grand Canyon, Glacier, Big Bend, and Zion. Save Our Signs needs your help to document these educational materials before they disappear.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/29/data-rescue-project-sos-help-save-our-signs-today/
Looking back exactly one year ago, a certain part of the #Fediverse was involved with crucial data rescue operations. This was because the political data cleansing in the US started to unfold and a group of dedicated people chose to form a guerilla data rescue collective, which we now know as @SafeguardingResearch and #SciOp.
Today, I took the opportunity to take a look back at 2025's events while also covering present and future developments of this movement in the form of a lecture and hands-on within my #LIS studies course on e-Publishing.
It was such a relief to once again talk about positive movements in those dark times utilizing decentralized technologies for social impact, and to pay tribute to the marginalized groups who are keeping up their fights every day.
In the discussion afterwards, among Master students of Library and Information Sciences (most of us do also already work in libraries) we talked about how one can publish scientific works in order to prevent getting taken down due to ideological data cleansing.
We all agreed up on that FAIR #OpenAccess should be mandatory for all publications. I proposed a three-way approach for actually storing the publication data simultaneously: 1. on a repository of a trustworthy organization, 2. on a (own) publicly accessable website, and 3. on a repository powered by decentralized technologies of ones choice. I reflected up on a thread I read here back in April 2025, where among others @jonny and @nichtich had talked about this topic: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/114310419885059486. Another take-away was to publish files as raw as possible, e.g. in plain text, Markdown or HTML. In addition to that, I would add that files (and metadata) should be stored tamper-resistant to ensure data integrity, and PDF files should be PDF/A of that kind that #DigiPres organizations currently recommend to be at least a bit more future-proof.
To take myself for an example, back a couple of years ago, starting with my bachelor thesis, I began to mirror all my publications to the decentralized storage network #IPFS, which also gives me data integrity and tamper resistance by content-addressing. Depending on the type of work I do also upload my stuff to my own website or Zenodo. I at least dual-store my work in raw text and PDF. The first setting or config I adjust with my word processing software is the PDF/A export setting, so that it will save files to PDF/A per default.
#SafeguardingResearch #DataRescue #DigitalPreservation #OpenScience #Science #GLAM #Libraries #DigitalHumanities #AcademicChatter #Research
Today, I took the opportunity to take a look back at 2025's events while also covering present and future developments of this movement in the form of a lecture and hands-on within my #LIS studies course on e-Publishing.
It was such a relief to once again talk about positive movements in those dark times utilizing decentralized technologies for social impact, and to pay tribute to the marginalized groups who are keeping up their fights every day.
In the discussion afterwards, among Master students of Library and Information Sciences (most of us do also already work in libraries) we talked about how one can publish scientific works in order to prevent getting taken down due to ideological data cleansing.
We all agreed up on that FAIR #OpenAccess should be mandatory for all publications. I proposed a three-way approach for actually storing the publication data simultaneously: 1. on a repository of a trustworthy organization, 2. on a (own) publicly accessable website, and 3. on a repository powered by decentralized technologies of ones choice. I reflected up on a thread I read here back in April 2025, where among others @jonny and @nichtich had talked about this topic: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/114310419885059486. Another take-away was to publish files as raw as possible, e.g. in plain text, Markdown or HTML. In addition to that, I would add that files (and metadata) should be stored tamper-resistant to ensure data integrity, and PDF files should be PDF/A of that kind that #DigiPres organizations currently recommend to be at least a bit more future-proof.
To take myself for an example, back a couple of years ago, starting with my bachelor thesis, I began to mirror all my publications to the decentralized storage network #IPFS, which also gives me data integrity and tamper resistance by content-addressing. Depending on the type of work I do also upload my stuff to my own website or Zenodo. I at least dual-store my work in raw text and PDF. The first setting or config I adjust with my word processing software is the PDF/A export setting, so that it will save files to PDF/A per default.
#SafeguardingResearch #DataRescue #DigitalPreservation #OpenScience #Science #GLAM #Libraries #DigitalHumanities #AcademicChatter #Research
Have any #DataRescue burning questions?? We have just the thing...
We're hosting an #AMA. Join us on January 30, 6-8pm Eastern through bluesky! Please submit your questions through our form.
If you can't make it, there is an option to receive a response via email!
DRP AMA 2026 Questions
The Record: Spotify disables accounts after open-source group scrapes 86 million songs from platform . “The spokesperson added that Anna’s Archive did not contact them before publishing the files. They also said it did not consider the incident a ‘hack’ of Spotify. The people behind the leaked database systematically violated Spotify’s terms by stream-ripping some of the music from the […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/25/the-record-spotify-disables-accounts-after-open-source-group-scrapes-86-million-songs-from-platform/Posted within minutes of each other: one article about the #DataRescue movement and one about the #SaveOurSigns efforts.
@washingtonpost.com@bsky.brid.gy
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...
Government’s historic role as ...
Anna’s Archive: Backing up Spotify. “Anna’s Archive normally focuses on text (e.g. books and papers). We explained in ‘The critical window of shadow libraries’ that we do this because text has the highest information density. But our mission (preserving humanity’s knowledge and culture) doesn’t distinguish among media types. Sometimes an opportunity comes along outside of text. This is […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/21/annas-archive-backing-up-spotify/Flickr Blog: Building Flickr Archives with Data Lifeboat. “With Data Lifeboat, you can create an archive to document a specific time and place, share memories of an event, or curate a collection of perspectives from around the globe. Simply put, conscious archiving with Data Lifeboat can allow you to create and share your own slice of history with future viewers from this vast collection. Here […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/12/20/flickr-blog-building-flickr-archives-with-data-lifeboat/St. Louis Magazine: Moonlighting librarians save the RFT’s online archive from its post-porn purge. “A newly available digital archive that encompasses much of the recent history of the Riverfront Times went live yesterday. It is the brainchild of Joshua Lawrence and Jaclyn Crow, two St. Louisans with a passion for local history…. The database currently has about 2,000 articles from the […]
Slaw: The Data Rescue Project: Preserving Government Data Is a Tech & Community Issue. “Precursors to the Data Rescue Project such as the End of Term Web Archive, which captures federal government data after presidential administration transitions, the 2017 Data Refuge Project, and the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), laid the groundwork for 2025 preservation efforts, but […]
Making 10M government PDF documents searchable https://flowingdata.com/2025/11/26/making-10m-government-pdf-documents-searchable/
"The code for GovScape is open source and available on GitHub."
We often discuss how public data influences our everyday lives whether we acknowledge it or not. This week's guest article highlights your daily interactions with public data: www.datarescueproject.org/guest-post-a...
#PublicData #DataRescue
Guest Post: A Day in the Life ...
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.07
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst