Data Archiving / en 91勛圖 hackathon to save climate data before Trump presidency brings "overwhelming reaction" /news/u-t-hackathon-save-climate-data-trump-presidency-brings-overwhelming-reaction <span class="field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden">91勛圖 hackathon to save climate data before Trump presidency brings "overwhelming reaction"</span> <div class="field field--name-field-featured-picture field--type-image field--label-hidden field__item"> <img loading="eager" srcset="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Michelle%20Murphy.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Lne5fs5u 370w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_740/public/Michelle%20Murphy.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=pt--GXiy 740w, /sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_1110/public/Michelle%20Murphy.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=ePCbb4Be 1110w" sizes="(min-width:1200px) 1110px, (max-width: 1199px) 80vw, (max-width: 767px) 90vw, (max-width: 575px) 95vw" width="740" height="494" src="/sites/default/files/styles/news_banner_370/public/Michelle%20Murphy.jpg?h=afdc3185&amp;itok=Lne5fs5u" alt="photo of media scrum"> </div> <span class="field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden"><span>geoff.vendeville</span></span> <span class="field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden"><time datetime="2016-12-19T14:18:00-05:00" title="Monday, December 19, 2016 - 14:18" class="datetime">Mon, 12/19/2016 - 14:18</time> </span> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-field-cutline-long field--type-text-long field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Cutline</div> <div class="field__item">History and Women and Gender Studies Professor Michelle Murphy speaks to the media during 91勛圖's hackathon to archive potentially at-risk environmental data (all photos by Geoffrey Vendeville)</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-reporters field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/authors-reporters/geoffrey-vendeville" hreflang="en">Geoffrey Vendeville</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-author-legacy field--type-string field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Author legacy</div> <div class="field__item">Geoffrey Vendeville</div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-topic field--type-entity-reference field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">Topic</div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/topics/global-lens" hreflang="en">Global Lens</a></div> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-story-tags field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden field__items"> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/libraries" hreflang="en">Libraries</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/donald-trump" hreflang="en">Donald Trump</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/politics" hreflang="en">Politics</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/environment" hreflang="en">Environment</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/climate-change" hreflang="en">Climate Change</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/data-archiving" hreflang="en">Data Archiving</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/international" hreflang="en">International</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/global" hreflang="en">Global</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/government" hreflang="en">Government</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/faculty-information" hreflang="en">Faculty of Information</a></div> <div class="field__item"><a href="/news/tags/ischool" hreflang="en">iSchool</a></div> </div> <div class="clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item"><p>The calls and emails began to pour in soon after three 91勛圖 researchers&nbsp;announced they would host a hackathon to preserve U.S. environmental data before it might be deleted by the Trump administration.&nbsp;</p> <p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38324045">BBC</a>, <em>Vice,</em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/12/14/u-of-t-preserving-environmental-data-ahead-of-donald-trump-presidency.html"><em>The Toronto Star</em>,</a> to name only a few,&nbsp;reported on the 91勛圖 effort to rescue information from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website. The guerilla archiving event was even mentioned in Stephen Colberts opening monologue on <em>The Late Show</em>.</p> <p>In Toronto, experts will copy irreplaceable public data and compile a website to harbor scientific information, Colbert&nbsp;said, quoting <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/?utm_term=.8ed1cfd679ef">a <em>Washington Post</em> story about the hackathon</a>. Thats right, he continued, its gotten so bad even <em>facts</em> are moving to Canada.</p> <p>The reaction was overwhelming, said <strong>Patrick Keilty</strong>, one of the organizers and an assistant professor in 91勛圖s Faculty of Information. This is an urgent issue and people obviously care passionately about it. I think thats a very hopeful sign.&nbsp;</p> <h3><a href="https://www.wired.com/2017/01/rogue-scientists-race-save-climate-data-trump/">Read more at Wired</a></h3> <p>Organizers said about 150 people came to the event in the Claude T. Bissell building adjoining Robarts Library on Saturday. They hunkered down at computers helping to mark vulnerable programs and data on the EPA website for safekeeping.</p> <p><img alt class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__2983 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" height="500" src="/sites/default/files/Tori%20on%20laptop.jpg" typeof="foaf:Image" width="750" loading="lazy"><br> <em>Hannah Jones (left)&nbsp;and Tori Lions (right)&nbsp;were glued to their laptops, helping store EPA data for posterity.</em></p> <p>The hacktivists said the climate data is in danger because president-elect Donald Trump has called global warming a hoax, tapped a climate sceptic to head the EPA and threatened to scrap the agency.</p> <p>The tech-savvy&nbsp;volunteers worked with <strong>Matt Price</strong>, a sessional instructor in the Faculty of Information, on code to scrape data from government websites.&nbsp;Without this data, Price said, it would be hard to make informed decisions about environmental policy.</p> <p>A democratic system has a lot of weaknesses, he said. We make up for those weaknesses by supporting reasoned argument and open access to evidence. When we lose those things, democracy is in trouble.&nbsp;</p> <p><img alt class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__2982 img__view_mode__media_original attr__format__media_original" height="500" src="/sites/default/files/Matt%20Price.jpg" typeof="foaf:Image" width="750" loading="lazy"><br> <em>A 91勛圖 sessional instructor in the Faculty of Information led a group of coders at the&nbsp;hackathon</em></p> <p>The information was stored in the Internet Archive, a San Francisco-based digital library of web pages, software, text and images.The 91勛圖 hackathon was part of the Internet Archives End of Term project, which began in 2008 to harvest information that was in danger of disappearing between presidential transitions.</p> <p>With reams of data to record and&nbsp;a month before inauguration day, time is running out to preserve decades of scholarship, said <strong>Michelle Murphy</strong>, director of 91勛圖s <a href="https://technoscienceunit.wordpress.com/about/">Technoscience Research Unit</a> and a professor of history and women and gender studies.&nbsp;</p> <p>Its a race against time, Murphy said. Its not necessarily like its going to happen on Jan.&nbsp;20th, but I think were going to see changes by Feb. 20th.&nbsp;</p> <h3><a href="http://torontolife.com/city/toronto-politics/qa-michelle-murphy-u-t-professor-whos-racing-preserve-climate-change-data-donald-trump-takes-office/">Read <em>Toronto Life</em>'s interview with Murphy</a></h3> <p>In addition to seeding thousands of URLs&nbsp;to the Internet Archives End of Term web crawler, including 192 at-risk programs and data sets, the volunteers made a toolkit with a list of best practices for storing mountains of information. They hoped to set a precedent for academics planning similar events in the U.S.&nbsp;including one at the University of Pennsylvania on Jan. 13.&nbsp;</p> <p>Patricia Kim, a PhD candidate in the environmental humanities program at U Penn, came to the hackathon to take notes for her own schools event.</p> <p>Whats great about this 91勛圖 and Penn collaborative effort is that it drives home the point that climate and the environment dont have borders, she said.&nbsp;</p> <p>The 91勛圖 researchers arent stopping at last weekends hackathon. They plan to monitor the EPA website after Trump comes into office&nbsp;to report any changes as soon as possible and to publish a report online about the new administrations first 100 days.&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Sam-chin Li</strong>, a reference/government publications librarian at 91勛圖, said it made sense for 91勛圖 to take the lead in archiving efforts because it has experience archiving Canadian government websites and has one of the top library systems in North America.&nbsp;</p> <p>Theres not much we can do about our neighbours election results, she said, but that doesnt mean we should sit by and do nothing.</p> <h3><a href="/news/u-t-preserving-environmental-websites-response-trump-presidency">Read more about the organizers behind the hackathon</a></h3> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> <div class="field field--name-field-news-home-page-banner field--type-boolean field--label-above"> <div class="field__label">News home page banner</div> <div class="field__item">Off</div> </div> Mon, 19 Dec 2016 19:18:00 +0000 geoff.vendeville 102933 at