Disappearing Data: Grassroots Efforts to Preserve Government Information in Uncertain Times
Wednesday, May 28, 2025, 3PM ET/2PM CT/1PM MT/12PM PT
Registration:
https://ala-events.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_T6svXipzTWGQywW6srp3Tw#/registration
Description:
As government websites quietly shed datasets and public records face increasing risk of removal, a growing network of librarians and civic-minded organizations are stepping up to safeguard access to vital information. This panel brings together three leaders in the fight to preserve government data: Molly Blake, a social sciences librarian crowdsourcing lost federal information; Dr. Lynda Kellam, a founding organizer of the Data Rescue Project; and Jack Cushman, who recently launched an archive of data.gov through the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. Together, this panel will explore the critical role libraries and grassroots communities play in protecting digital infrastructure. This panel is brought to you by the American Library Association's Politics, Policy and International Relations Section and the Government Documents Round Table's Help I'm' an Accidental Government Information Librarian webinar series.
Speaker Bios:
Molly Blake (she/her) is a Social Sciences librarian at the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities, where she serves as the liaison to the Economics, Educational Psychology, and Political Science departments and to the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Prior to joining the University of Minnesota, she held librarian positions at Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights, MN and at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN. She has additional professional experience in teaching, writing, research, and non-profit work.
Jack Cushman is the director of the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, a software and design lab at the Harvard Law School Library building tools and communities for open knowledge. A software engineer and appellate attorney, he previously worked as lead developer of the Caselaw Access Project, and has served as a lecturer on computer programming at Harvard Law School, as a fellow of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and as a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.
Dr. Lynda Kellem is one of the founding organizers of the Data Rescue Project and the Snyder-Granader Director of Research Data & Digital Scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. She is the co-author of Numeric Data Services and Sources for the General Reference Librarian (2011), co-editor of Databrarianship: The Academic Data Librarian in Theory and Practice (2016), and has presented extensively on data services, data management, and FAIR Guidelines. She is the current secretary of IASSIST, an international data professional organization, and has served in leadership positions at ACRL and GODORT. She holds an MLIS, an MA in Political Science, and a PhD in American History.
------------------------------
Julia Ezzo (she/her)
Chair, GODORT Program Committee
Chair-Elect, GODORT
Government Information, Packaging, & Political Science Librarian
Michigan State University Libraries
366 W. Circle Drive Db6
East Lansing, MI 48824-1048
(517) 884-6387
julia@msu.edu------------------------------