Anticipatory Maintenance and Emergency Curation: Rethinking The Data Rescue Movement

This talk examines how volunteers involved in the 2016/17 Data Rescue movement navigated concerns about the stability and stewardship of U.S. federal environmental data following the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump. Drawing on sixteen in-depth interviews with organizers and participants, the movement is characterized as a form of emergency curation: rapid, provisional data preservation efforts mobilized under conditions of political uncertainty and systemic distrust. The concept of anticipatory maintenance is explored in order to describe how volunteers acted as if future disruption had already happened, translating anticipated data loss into routines of copying, distributing, and decentralizing federal data. Through this lens, infrastructural fragility is understood as a relational and political condition shaped by shifting institutional commitments and contested understandings of public responsibility. The talk also traces affective dimensions of the Data Rescue movement, highlighting both its successes and strain on the participants.