preserve government data and a book he recently wrote with a colleague Preserving Government Information: Past, Present, and Future (
https://freegovinfo.info/pgi). He says: “Libraries have long had a role in preserving and giving public access to government information (publications AND data). However, the advent of the internet has eroded libraries’ traditional collection and preservation role. One of the key tenets of the FDLP is to provide a preservation buffer for public infor- mation. This administration’s attack on public information and the public record has spurred many librarians and others to pitch in toward the work of EOT, DRP, PEDP etc.” He also points out “Kelly Smith, a librarian friend of mine at UC San Diego, is managing a really great “trump tracker” site” (
https://tinyurl.com/ trump-tracker).
Outside the US
Organisations outside of the US are also working to preserve threatened US Government information and data. One is Safeguarding Research & Culture (SRC –
https://safeguar.de/) which is supported by researchers, librarians and other data and information experts and volunteers from across the EU. It’s core team members provide a number of examples of how changes in the US have bled across its borders - from bird flu data to a conference travel ban for scientists (later rescinded). But one positive export has also been the speed and energy with which some information professionals have responded to the crisis in the US. Asked to define SRC’s relationship with the library sector Jez Cope, Data Services Lead at the British Library (SRC is not affiliated with the BL) says: “Henrik was very clear right from the start that having involvement from people with expertise in information management, metadata standards, etc. was vital and that’s clearly a core strength of the profession. I got involved myself by responding to an early call out for librarians.”
Henrik Schönemann, Humboldt Univer- sität zu Berlin, says: “We interact with a lot of librarians, especially in coordinating rescue operations as well as partnerships. One of our partners outside the USA is TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology and University Library in Hanover.”
He adds that they also worked with librarians in the US: “One of our closest partner is the Data Rescue Project (DRP), which ‘is a coordinated effort among a group of data organizations, including IASSIST, RDAP, and members of the Data Curation Network’. Librarians, like the ones who started Data Rescue Project, are irreplaceable and instrumental in preserv- ing information and providing access.”
24 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL Department of Agriculture (which includes Forestry). Photo via Wiki Commons Institutional risk
Asked if librarians have a role in counter- ing the kind of crisis that Donald Trump has caused, Jez says: “Yes! I think many of our users see libraries as institutions that will always be there as part of the fabric of their world, especially larger research & academic libraries, and assume that because our employers are large and respected and act in the public interest that the material we collect will be safe because we have it and are professionals. But as we’ve seen, size and noble goals are no protection against the attacks hap- pening now. In many cases the values we uphold, such as free and unfettered access to information, are in direct opposition to the goals of oppressive regimes.” And like James R. Jacobs, SRC has spot- ted historic technical obstacles to some of its rescue attempts but also believes the Trump administration is being purpose- fully obstructive. Henrik says: “From my perspective, it comes in waves. Some warning reaches us and our partners, be it via Executive Orders, media reporting, or insiders. Sometimes there is a timeframe given (as with certain NOAA datasets), but most of- ten the when, what and how is uncertain. I do believe that the uncertainty is not just a by-product, but also the point.” Ashley Gay, SRC, says: “The adminis- tration has attempted to prevent safe- guarding efforts, mostly through a lack of transparency and forewarning, with data going down with no signs of its imminent deletion before it’s gone. (eg.
covid.gov)” And William Waites, University of Southampton, added that: “Apart from giving little or no warning, we have seen
occasional implementation of measures like captchas or rate limiting to make it harder to save data.”
And like James, William says that some of the problems in saving information are historic. “There are other difficulties that arise from poor architectural choices such as visualisations done in such a way as to make it very difficult to get at the un- derlying data. For example, the Forestry Service’s climate risk viewer, of particular interest to farmers (who launched a suc- cessful lawsuit when it was removed) and so important for food security, is imple- mented as an ArcGIS web application.”
Library backup
SRC does what libraries would if they could move fast: “I see it as being very complementary,” Jez says. “There’s a lot of great work being done on this by librar- ies and archives inside and outside the US. For a number of reasons SRC is able to move more quickly than libraries can to make a dataset or website safe, which then allows them to take more time and care over selection and curation decisions, and make things more accessible and usa- ble for the future. Hopefully, in turn we’ll then be able to put these curated versions into the distributed archive so that it’s more resilient in the future.” Ashley adds: “We’ve already received requests from professionals in various fields requesting we archive certain things. While I can’t speak to librarians specifically, we give people who aren’t technical and may not know how to archive things a way to request things be archived, as well as a relatively easy way to access these things.” IP
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