Lesson plan
Data rescue
Data rescue is a movement among scientists, researchers and others to preserve primarily government-hosted data sets, often scientific in nature, to ward off their removal from publicly available websites. While the concept of preserving federal data existed before, it gained new impetus with the election in 2016 of U.S. President Donald Trump. As Trump reemerged in 2025, there were renewed concerns about the need for data rescue. The concept of harvesting and preserving federal web pages began as early as 2008, at the conclusion of President George W. Bush's second term, under the name "End of Term Presidential Harvest." Soon after Trump's election, scientists, librarians and others in the U.S. and Canada—fearing that the administration of Trump (who had denied the validity of the scientific consensus on the existence of climate change ) would act to remove scientific data from government websites —began working to preserve those data. Quickly, the concept of data rescue became a grassroots movement, with organized "hackathon" events at cities across the U.S. and elsewhere, often hosted at universities and other institutions of higher education.
Article summary
Data rescue is a movement among scientists, researchers and others to preserve primarily government-hosted data sets, often scientific in nature, to ward off their removal from publicly available websites. While the concept of preserving federal data existed before, it gained new impetus with the election in 2016 of U.S. President Donald Trump. As Trump reemerged in 2025, there were renewed concerns about the need for data rescue. The concept of harvesting and preserving federal web pages began as early as 2008, at the conclusion of President George W. Bush's second term, under the name "End of Term Presidential Harvest." Soon after Trump's election, scientists, librarians and others in the U.S. and Canada—fearing that the administration of Trump (who had denied the validity of the scientific consensus on the existence of climate change ) would act to remove scientific data from government websites —began working to preserve those data. Quickly, the concept of data rescue became a grassroots movement, with organized "hackathon" events at cities across the U.S. and elsewhere, often hosted at universities and other institutions of higher education.
Key claims
No claims recorded.
Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
No sources recorded.
Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.