A Motivating Climate: An Exploratory Case Study of the DataRescue Movement

This study explores motivations in the DataRescue movement of 2017 that led to the identification and archiving of at-risk federal environmental data in digital repositories. It describes interviews with three national DataRescue coordinators involved in Data Refuge and the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) and analyses of their organizations’ websites. Particularly, it looks at the impact of federal record-keeping laws on DataRescue and whether organizers considered the data’s eventual users.Motivations for these projects included determining the scope of at-risk federal environmental data, communicating and raising awareness of the risk, and creating a long-term plan for access to and preservation of data. Environmental data justice (EDJ) was a stated principle for the DataRescue movement, and organizers utilized storytelling to demonstrate environmental data’s impact on people’s lives. The existence of federal record-keeping laws impacted DataRescue events only insofar as participants saw the laws protecting data as inadequate.Master of Science in Library Scienc