Data Under Threat — Join the Data Rescue Hackathon

The Trump administration has aggressively removed scientific and governmental research data from public access, purging thousands of web pages and datasets related to climate, health, demographics, LGBTQ + issues, and more — silently erasing vital knowledge that underpins scientific progress.

While some European institutions start backing up at-risk research data, the data rescue movement is driven by grassroots efforts like the “Data Rescue Project” and the “Safeguarding Research & Culture” initiative, who have mobilized volunteers, librarians, and scientists to download and archive these resources before they are lost forever

Join the LMU Open Science Center Safeguar.de Hackathon

At this hands-on event, we welcome Henrik Schönemann (HU Berlin), an initiator of safeguar.de, for an ignition talk. In the practical part, we will directly support the data rescue efforts:

• Learn & Build: Install a BitTorrent client on your own machine to seed and safeguard critical research datasets. Scrape at-risk data sets.
• Repurpose Old Hardware: Turn old 2.5” HDDs, Raspberry Pis, or laptops into dedicated data rescue nodes by installing Linux and setting up archiving tools.
• Improve Tools & Docs: Write better documentation and develop one-click installation scripts to simplify deployment on any system.

Open to Everyone — Not Just Coders

While some parts are technical, we welcome everyone to contribute to: Outreach, documentation, coordination, creative ideas.

Let’s work together to preserve scientific knowledge and build a resilient, community-powered data infrastructure.

You can contribute to the project by …

• Donating old hardware and/or
• Attending the Hackathon
• participating in the discussions

Presenters

• Henrik Schönemann