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A Massive Archiving Effort at National Parks (with Jenny McBurney and Lynda Kellam)

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Transcript

If you’ve been to a national park in the U.S. recently, you might have noticed some odd new signs about “beauty” and “grandeur.” Or, some signs you were used to seeing might now be missing completely. An executive order issued earlier this year put the history and educational aspects of the parks system under threat–but a group of librarians stepped in to save it. 

This week we have a conversation between Sam and two of the leaders of the independent volunteer archiving project Save Our Signs, an effort to archive national park signs and monument placards. It’s a community collaboration project co-founded by a group of librarians, public historians, and data experts in partnership with the Data Rescue Project and Safeguarding Research & Culture. 

Lynda Kellam leads the Research Data and Digital Scholarship team at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and is a founding organizer of the Data Rescue Project. Jenny McBurney is the Government Publications Librarian and Regional Depository Coordinator at the University of Minnesota Libraries. In this episode, they discuss turning “frustration, dismay and disbelief” at parks history under threat into action: compiling more than 10,000 images from over 300 national parks into a database to be preserved for the people.

YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/Zjn18HMMUus
Sam:

Hello, and welcome to the four four media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four four media is journalist founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 44media.co, as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get early access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. And they get access to our interview series like this one too.

Sam:

Gain access to that content at 44media.co. This week, we are joined by Linda Kellum and Jenny McBurney. Linda Kellum leads the research data and digital scholarship team at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and is a founding organizer of the Data Rescue Project, which we're gonna get into in this episode. And Jenny is the government publications librarian and regional depository coordinator, nailed it, at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Thank you both for being here.

Sam:

I'm so excited to talk about this project. We cover archiving, preservation, and all that good stuff quite a bit for four. So very excited to talk to you with some of the folks who do it every day. Yeah. So, Jenny, do you wanna say hi to people who can recognize your voice?

Sam:

I just realized we're having a two person interview podcast is a little different.

Jenny:

Sure. Yeah. What should I say? Hi. I'm Jenny.

Linda:

And Linda? Hi. I'm Linda. Awesome.

Sam:

Thank you. Yeah. So both Jenny and Linda have been volunteering to help lead this independent project called Save Our Signs. It's something that I wrote about a couple months ago and then again last week when they launched the result of the archiving. And Save Our Signs is this really big impressive effort to archive national park signs and monument placards around the country.

Sam:

It's crowdsourced. It's community collaboration. It was cofounded by librarians, public historians, data experts, And all of this was done in in partnership with the librarians at their respective universities, but also with the Data Rescue Project and safeguarding research and culture, which are both doing really important work, especially following the Trump administration and just in the few nine, you know, nine months that we've had so far, shockingly, as so much information, public information, and data, and just knowledge on the Internet and IRL has gone down as a result of some of the orders that we're gonna talk about today. So we'll get into that in a second. But tell us a little bit about yourselves before we dig into this project.

Sam:

How did you get into library sciences and data preservation? Linda, do you wanna go first?

Linda:

Sure. I've been a data librarian since 2007, so I've been around for a while. And I actually started in a position similar to Jenny's where I was a a not a regional coordinator, but I was part of the government information, depository system as a librarian. I got into data librarianship because I was a political science major. So I'd been working in a a PhD program for political science.

Linda:

I'd been working then with data for a while, both qualitative and quantitative. And I decided I didn't really like political science much anymore, so I started looking around for career paths, and and data librarianship seemed like a good use of my skills, especially at that time because it was so early in in that field. There weren't a lot of people who had skills with data in in librarianship at the time. So I thought it was a good fit. Decided to do it, and here I here we are.

Sam:

Relevant to where we're at today, for sure. I think everyone needs to take a political science course at this point. Very cool. Thank you for that. Jenny, how about you?

Jenny:

Yeah. Well, it's a slightly similar origin story and that I also did poly sci as an undergrad degree. And while I was in my undergrad, my adviser was a faculty member and a librarian at the same time. And so I basically wanted to be her when I grew up. And so went to library school, took the GovDoc class, bounced around in a couple different liaison areas.

Jenny:

Lately, I've ended up as the government publications librarian, and it lends itself very well to looking at data and just open resources and information that everyone in the public should be able to access. Yeah. So all of this just fits really well into all of my interests.

Sam:

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like everyone or so many people, especially in academia have that moment of, like, I wanna be that person. Yes. How do what are the steps, you know, that I take to be, you know, my mentor or someone that I look up to?

Sam:

Definitely. Yeah. So you were both positioned pretty well for 2025 after that experience and building that that knowledge base. And in March, we saw Trump sign this executive order titled restoring truth and sanity to American history. Good start.

Sam:

Amazing title. What a banger. And in that order, it demanded that public officials make sure that things like monument placards and signs and things that, you know, we take for granted when you show up to, like, DC, for example, and you walk up to, like, the MLK Memorial and you say, here's a sign that someone wrote and decided to put there or even, a battlefield or something like that. And it said that anything under the the Department of Interior's jurisdiction, basically, which is a lot of stuff, would never attempt to address anything negative about American history and past or present. And instead, they should only ever acknowledge how beautiful and pretty America looks.

Sam:

I think the wording in the EO was beauty and grandeur.

Jenny:

Right? Does.

Sam:

Which is great. Love, beauty, and grandeur. But there's a lot of American history that is not pretty to look at, and that is important to know. So this executive order demanded that those signs come down, that said anything negative about America by September 17, and this was in March. So walk me through where you were when you heard about this order, and what was, like because you're coming from a very different mindset than a lot of people.

Sam:

A lot of people were like, fuck. That's crazy. You were you had a different reaction. So I would love to hear just, like, where you were, what you were doing at the time, and what your initial, like, first reaction was to hearing this.

Linda:

I I can say that so at that time, I was work in the thick of the data rescue project work. So the first reaction in March was, what in the world are they talking about? This is, you know, just sheer frustration. But in March, it was really hard to kinda concentrate on what they were what the implications would be, I think. And and there was other things that we had to focus on.

Linda:

So for me, it's dismay and frustration that they would and and I don't think these these people the people who wrote that, I don't think they go to national parks. They don't think they understand what is at national parks, that this isn't national parks aren't just, natural areas that they are they engage with our history, of America. And so it was it was also a bit of, in addition to frustration, dismay, like, disbelief and that they understand even what a national park is. So

Sam:

Yeah. It's pretty clear from, like, from the wording that they don't understand. So I totally and I hadn't even thought of that, that they probably don't even get it, that it's not just a pretty place to look at. Where where you might see a bear or something. It's actually, like, meant to be educational.

Linda:

There's a lot of different kinds of parts out there. Yeah.

Sam:

Which I didn't even fully grasp until I started reporting on this. Mhmm. Jenny, what was your first, like, gut reaction to that?

Jenny:

Yeah. At that point, I think it had been over a 100 executive orders had come out since the beginning of the whole situation. And I I remember reading the title of it and being like, whatever. I can't deal with this and just moving on with my life and did not pay attention until the secretarial order came out in May May 20. And so when the secretary of the interior made a order about what the specifics of the implementation of what this executive order would be, that's when I started paying attention.

Jenny:

I was like, oh, this is actually gonna do something bad.

Linda:

So Yeah.

Sam:

Yeah. And and that order was I mean, I I saw that and totally agree that that that at that point, you're like, okay. People who are in charge of implementing this are taking it seriously, and they're actually gonna do it. You know, they're falling in line. So that was that was part of also the what secretary Doug Burgum wrote in that order was, this is how we're gonna do it, and how they were gonna do it was partially they were gonna start putting QR codes up next to park signs.

Sam:

Right? Yeah. Am I remembering that correctly?

Linda:

Well, there and there's a sign that they required the parks to put up that had the QR code where you could report signage that was disparaging. So

Sam:

Yes. Yeah. And I I saw one of those for the first time ever a month ago, I think, at the the big prison that's on Governor's Island in New York, which is has an incredibly dark history.

Linda:

Mhmm.

Sam:

And, you know, you have this sign here that's like, if you don't like what you're reading, snitch. You know? It's like, no. The point is to learn about it and to know what happened here. It's a prison.

Sam:

It exists, and it's preserved to remember that history. So, okay. So that's a really good point that, you know, the interior secretary was like, okay. We're gonna actually do this. We're gonna we're gonna enforce this ridiculous EO about restoring truth and sanity.

Sam:

Scary enough. And then what was kind of the next step? Like, did you immediately go into, like, a librarian mode and start thinking we have to do something, or what was the next impulse you had?

Linda:

Yeah. Yeah. Independently, that was the interesting part. So Data Rescue Project started talking about ways that we could try and capture do a crowdsource effort to get, pick people taking pictures and submitting them. And we went through several iterations.

Linda:

We thought maybe just submit them to Blue Sky would be the easiest because we have a Blue Sky account. And then we tried to set up another approach that did not we actually got ended up locked out of that approach for some reason. I forget why. It was just it didn't work out. And I think that that's when we put out a call for assistance because we were just so frustrated trying to figure out what the mechanism would be for doing this.

Linda:

But my my idea or the or not my idea, but the my goal in for myself was that I wanted to turn the tactic on the the administration. So if they were gonna use QR codes to have people report these pictures, I wanted to have people report what they loved about the pictures, you know, to kind of flip the script a little bit. And that once we put out a call on matter most, I think that's when Jenny saw that and and was like, oh, we're already we're already doing this. So

Sam:

So cool that you were having, like, the same brainwave at the same time. So then, Jenny, what were you working on over at in Minnesota?

Jenny:

Yeah. So pretty much the same conversations that we were having, like, okay. We gotta do something about this. What are we gonna do? What are the different ways that we could what are the different tools that we could use?

Jenny:

And for me, the specific turning point happened at at a AI conference. Will

Sam:

In other places.

Jenny:

I'm not the biggest fan of AI, but I was presenting at a panel there. And one of my co panelists was Kirsten Dullegard, who is the director of the Mapping Prejudice Project at the University of Minnesota. And I was like, Kirsten, I'm really bummed out about the national parks. And she was like, yeah. Me too.

Jenny:

And I was like, you know, Mapping Prejudice does all this really cool crowdsourcing community based work. Could we do that for national park signs? And she was like, yes. Let's do this. So we started trying different things, but we didn't really know how to really get things moving.

Jenny:

And so that's when I was at that comp I was at a different conference, the ALA conference in Philadelphia. And I saw Linda's post in the Mattermost where we kind of chat about data rescue things. And I was like, oh my gosh. This is this is gonna work. We found people who can help make this happen.

Jenny:

Yeah. And so we had kind of settled on the idea of using a Qualtrics survey because working out of a university, we have access to these really powerful tools. Qualtrics is really great and we chose it because folks can upload materials without like photos without having to log in with an email account. And we knew from having various conversations with people who work in the in the parks that anonymity was gonna be a really important aspect of people wanting to participate in this project. And so we we realized that this was gonna be the best option from our end where we could collect the photos, but also information about the photos and keep that information really organized and also not create a barrier of people having to, like, say who they were, that they could just take their photo and submit it to the online form.

Sam:

Yeah. And so if you're, if I'm at a park and I see a sign that I wanna preserve, and you were taking all signs. Right? Like, it wasn't just like, if you think this sign might be at risk, it was like, I saw signs for, like, Astig Island. It was like, oh, that's nice.

Sam:

Like, probably fine, but, like, you know, keep it for sure. But people if you get to a sign and you open the Qualtrics link, right, and then you snap a photo and put in like, what else is in the form that you were taking from people?

Jenny:

Yeah. So they upload the photo. They say, yes. I consent to put this into the project and put it into the public domain so that the photo can be reused. They can also enter the title of the sign if they have time, if they feel inclined, or any additional information about it.

Jenny:

Like, it's located at this particular section of the park or it's located in this particular building in the park. And then they can also add the date and submit it. And so we tried to make it as short of a survey as possible to make it easier for people. And we also got a lot of help from folks through the Data Rescue Project Network of finding people who are really good at building accessible, good Qualtrics surveys specifically. And so getting help on that was really important too to make sure that it was a usable tool.

Sam:

Yeah. For sure. You want a little friction as possible. Right. Mhmm.

Linda:

Do it

Sam:

do it as as quickly as possible and get on your way. I think Linda mentioned something about this just now also, but, like, the the decision to make it a crowdsourced effort. You could have just said, we have a network of people who have experience archiving and will, like, take the high quality photo and get the information we want. You could have just said go out to your parks and do this. Why did you decide to leave it up to the public to bring in all of this data?

Linda:

We we could we didn't have that reach. I mean, we knew that there was no way we could have the reach, and it was by the time we had started to get everything together, it was so close to July 4 that I we wanted to capitalize on that, on the fact that people would be going out to parks. We had had a lot of luck with crowdsourcing the data rescue efforts, and so it it didn't seem that this seemed like an easier lift for a lot of people who may be wanting to do something but weren't really feeling like they could do a data rescue because that does require some technical, skill. So this is something that anybody could do. You can go take a picture, you can submit it onto a form.

Linda:

It's really not that hard. And that and that so I think that's that was one, it was it was just a matter of, feasibility to be able to cover all of 300 parks or as many of those as possible. And then two, getting people the word out there about what was happening and how important national parks are and and why we should care about this issue. I think that those those are the the the two things that I see as the most important for that crowdsource element.

Jenny:

Yeah. A lot of the same thoughts and especially like the point that you made earlier about that, you know, this is what the administration was asking for for the public to weigh in. Okay. Well, then we're gonna weigh in and we're gonna show what we think is important. We, the people of America, are gonna say that we think this is important and contribute to this collection of photos.

Sam:

Yeah. I I and sorry for repeating myself to people who listen to the podcast because I think I discussed the project before, and they they probably heard me say this before. But I think it's such an interesting exercise just in that muscle for people to to start looking and paying attention to things, to not just understanding what an executive order like this can do. Because signs did start going down even before, I think, September, there were a couple signs that were I'm blanking on. Do you guys remember which

Linda:

one The Muir.

Sam:

The John Muir. Muir Woods.

Linda:

Yeah. Yep.

Sam:

Yeah. So it was like it was starting to happen, and it probably is still happening. And I like I said, I learned something about national parks. Like, I didn't realize how huge the system was, and I'm a national parks fan. And I think if you're not if you're not someone who's, like, super engaged on a lot of political issues, maybe you can, like, appreciate that the parks are this other kind of, like, very sacred thing that everyone is meant to enjoy.

Sam:

It's it seems like the least political thing in the world to go out and enjoy your local park. So I think, like, making people kind of flex that muscle a little bit is interesting. And Mhmm. In a way that is very positive. Like you said, it's it's highlighting, like, what we love about having access to this information, this education.

Sam:

Not just, like, attempting to scramble to get it saved, but, like, really appreciating it, which I think was not the goal probably, but, like, definitely cool.

Linda:

Yeah. Well and and I will say that I think the that some people assume that these these new signs were just created in 2020 or in response to 2020 events in 2020. And and if you look at Philadelphia's signs, a lot of those were years and decades in the making, and acknowledgment of the the history of slavery in Independence Park is a huge part of the conversation that's been going on in Philadelphia about this. So that it's not you know, recognizing not just that this is important for you as a person, but also for the wider community and and the efforts that's gone in to recognize the the the history of slavery or the history of civil rights in the country. I think it's been a very important part of this and something that I don't think a lot of people reckon understand who aren't engaged in it every day.

Linda:

So

Sam:

Yeah. The signage in parks is one of those things that, like, you don't notice or think about until you're really looking meant you're really there reading and being thoughtful about what you're consuming. For a lot of people, I think, you're there just to, like, see I don't know. It's like the the Statue Of Liberty National Monument is part of the park system. Mhmm.

Sam:

And there were so many. There were, like, 440 signs from that just that monument, which I thought was really interesting. I don't know if I could not have been the only one person.

Linda:

Oh, well, so we did an event. We Okay. Got there.

Sam:

That explains that. Okay. So you had guys had an event there to promote?

Linda:

Yeah. We we had, two volunteers from or two of our steering committee members who live in New York, took two different groups, one to Ellis Island. Lena Bowman took them to Ellis Island, and I forget where the, the other group went, but, Ellis I think most of the people went to Ellis Island. And So cool. And then that's why independent Independence Park is the second most submissions because it's it's been a big deal here and a lot of coverage in Philadelphia.

Sam:

Yeah. Okay. That explains that. I was like, god. This one guy at Ellis Island really racking it up.

Sam:

He's trying to get high score. Yeah. Sorry.

Linda:

Go a cool event. It was cool to be able to take people there and and, like, we paid for the ferry to ride. Digger Rescue Project paid for the ferry ride, to for the people who decided to come. And, but I think that's the thing. Somebody said this to me early on, it's not just about the rescues.

Linda:

It's about the community we build through the rescues. And I think that's something to, you know, keep in mind.

Jenny:

Yeah.

Linda:

Yeah.

Jenny:

I think that you kinda touched on that, Sam. You said, like, I don't know if it was the goal. I think it kinda was the goal. Like, there's two goals here. There's there's the preservation and there's the getting people involved, getting people to think about history, talk to each other, all of that.

Sam:

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. And just going through the signs that were captured is it's so interesting because I mean, I was just clicking signs, like, at at random to write about this in Els Island, obviously. So many of the so many of the signage is very it's not like it doesn't have a political agenda.

Sam:

It's just saying exactly what was happening. And what was happening was people were fleeing war and oppression and genocide, and that's very relevant to today. And, you know, sites like the Frederick Douglass historical site in DC has the I think it they probably have the full I just saw a couple of the signs quoting, but the full what to the slave is July 4 address. And that's just it's a beautiful piece of work that is so relevant to today. And it's just I like, if if the administration was gonna send out people to take down these signs, that would be just I'm just imagining, like, ripping them all down.

Sam:

It would you would have to take all of them down because how would you ever I don't know. It's like all of them were, like, subversive in their own way while being just completely straight. No politics about it. Just this is what was happening at the time and what people were thinking about and dealing with. So I thought it was really incredible just to go through archive.

Sam:

But we'll talk about the archive in a second. I'm getting ahead of myself. Were you rushed? Was this like a very, like, we need to get on this, like, immediately? Because I know a lot of archive projects, especially in the digital world are like, this is going down tomorrow.

Sam:

Get a terabyte ready. Like, let's go. What was kind of the mood? Was it very urgent for you to get this launched?

Jenny:

Yeah. I mean, we we kinda talked about trying to make capitalize on that fourth of July weekend, and, like, that was the initial deadline of let's get this going. Let's get everything set up and ready to release. I think we officially launched on July 3. And yeah.

Jenny:

I mean, all along, there's a sense of urgency because we don't know exactly what's at risk, and we don't know exactly when it's at risk. Like you mentioned, Sam, like, there there have been some signs that came down before and after the September 17 kind of initial deadline, and then there's there's no real understanding, at least at least I don't understand exactly when things are gonna be done. So we don't know. Have they have they stopped? Have they finished taking down signs?

Jenny:

Or is this gonna continue? And we kinda have to keep our eyes open to know when it's happening. So all along, there's a there's a bit of a sense of urgency to to try to collect as much as possible before it can be removed or changed.

Linda:

And there's some sites that we still can't get to. I mean, that are either closed. There's one site in particular I would love in Pennsylvania I'd love to go to, but it's on a active military base. And it's a former Native American school. So it's definitely one of those that would be fit within kind of the the main things that we're looking for.

Linda:

But

Jenny:

And and that's why we are continuing to accept photos. And so if people are, you know, still going out to parks, you take pictures of of everything that you see. And like we've been saying all along, like, we don't know what is at risk. We don't we don't have a shared definition of what negative means or what disparaging means. Yeah.

Jenny:

And so we want pictures of everything, and we still need pictures from a lot of places. And so we're still collecting photos.

Linda:

I'll give you a fun example that's not it's not in civil rights history. It's not within that angle, but I think it's an interesting one. The the Guilford Courthouse the Battle of Guilford Courthouse is a site in North Carolina that is we the the revolutionary forces lost quite a bit. I mean, they lost many men. They it was abjectly a loss.

Linda:

But they did so they damaged the British forces so much that it changed the course of revolutionary history. And that that site tells that story, but the one of the questions I had when I went to it was like, would this be seen as disparaging? I mean, this is, you know, a negative view of the revolutionary army because it talks about the fact that the North Carolinians just kind of hightailed it and ran away from the battle and other kinds of tales, you know, of of of mutiny in a sense. But but it's but it's it was a critical part of the revolutionary history. So the way the orders are written is

Sam:

are

Linda:

so vague that even something that that's you would normally see as a pot like, in a pot part of military history could be interpreted as disparaging of. So it's one of those examples where it's, you know, we know what certain we know what are what the likely candidates for removal, and, certainly, those are the ones that we targeted. But the way you can read this could be so much broader Right. Than

Sam:

Yeah. And I'm sure that's by design. Yeah. I'm sure that's that's part of the playbook here. The White House is part of the National Park System

Linda:

Mhmm.

Sam:

Currently being taken part. Maybe we need

Linda:

to get somebody out there to take some pictures. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam:

God. I have to laugh or laugh or we will cry. So you launched was it immediately just like everybody was flooding submissions? Did they trickle in? Like, what was the the reaction after you launched?

Jenny:

Yeah. I mean, shout out to

Linda:

you at four zero four Media for getting

Jenny:

the first media mention out there. Yeah. Yeah. That's really how we got the word out. Right?

Jenny:

Like, we, shared on the data rescue projects Blue Sky and shared on lots of different listservs. And once we started hearing from reporters, then that was that was the chance to really get the story out into the people's hands. And I think that it only took a few weeks before suddenly the the submissions were just spiking, like, off the charts. Like, I thought I was gonna be able to see the photos come in and, like, look at each one as they came in. And that worked for, a week.

Jenny:

And then and then it was too much, and it was very overwhelming. And we're like, okay. It's just gonna happen, and we'll figure it out later.

Sam:

It's a good problem to have.

Jenny:

It is. Mhmm. Yeah.

Sam:

Was it a was it a huge project to then sort that data to make it something that you could show Yes. The public and put into the domain? Yes. Tell me about that process.

Jenny:

Yeah. So the we kinda went with the original deadline of September 17 because we needed a cutoff point. And so we said everything that anybody submitted before that date, we at the very least, we would get all of that out there by October 13, which was the date that we had picked to tell people that, yes, we are in fact gonna share this the photographs that you take and make it part of a publicly accessible collection. And so we could do a little bit of work before then to prep scripts and things that we're gonna help organize all the photos and get them all to the right places. But there's only so much you can do before you wait till the cutoff date and then say, okay.

Jenny:

Here we go. And then we turned on all the scripts and things broke and then we kept working on it and had about a week to get everything organized. And then when that was ready, then we had a giant spreadsheet with I think it was around 10,400 photos that had been submitted through September 24. We're like, okay. That'll be the real cutoff date.

Jenny:

Give ourselves a little bit of wiggle room there. And then we had to go through and look at every single one to make sure that it was in scope of the project. And so we got a whole giant room full of friends together, and they helped. And we spent a week curating photos saying, like, yep. This is in scope.

Jenny:

Nope. This is a picture of a buffalo and it's really cute, but that is not a sign and does not belong Wait.

Sam:

I want the buffalo picture project next, please.

Jenny:

There were

Linda:

it was The bloopers for a different group.

Jenny:

Yes. Yes. It was honestly so much fun. Like, so inspiring to see all of these amazing pictures that people went out and took and they're like, thousands of people contributed all of these photos. It was just so cool.

Jenny:

And also, I learned so much looking at all of the different signs. Like, you get distracted. You're supposed to be checking like, is there no people in this picture? Is it a sign? Wait a minute.

Jenny:

This is really cool. Oops. Now I'm reading the sign. So but we got through them. We we got through all of them in about a week.

Jenny:

And then it took another week to somehow get those into a publicly viewable website, which thank goodness it finally worked. It was a little bit of a challenge, but we've got really amazing people on the team and helping. And so just all kinds of people putting effort into it. It was really, really great.

Sam:

So cool. Yeah. The the site looks amazing. It looks really good. I love the design of it.

Sam:

This is very fun. So, yeah, go check it out if you haven't. Do you have the URL offhand?

Jenny:

If you go to saveour.org, there's kind of three big buttons. And so there's view the collection and then add your photos and then look at where we still need photos. So that's probably the fastest route to find it is to to go to saveoursigns.org and then click on view the photos.

Sam:

Perfect. Yeah. And add your photos. Yeah. As I've been I've been to a couple of parks this summer, and I've been slipping.

Sam:

I need to make up my archive quota. Just to kinda to close this out here, I would love to hear what each of you see as not just, like, the future of archiving or, like, the near future because who knows how anything is going? You know, like, we can only look so far into the future. But what do you see as, like, the immediate kind of need of archiving? And why is this work important?

Sam:

Because it is thankless work in a lot of ways. So but it is so vital to remembering our history and keeping history alive. So I would just love to hear just why you think this is worth doing, getting involved in, all that good stuff?

Jenny:

Yeah. I mean, I guess I get a lot of hope and joy out of all of the comments that we get from people and just hearing that people appreciate the opportunity to help in some way even if it's small. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, is it the biggest deal in the world to keep track of some signs and some parks? You know, maybe not, but this is how we're telling our story. This is one piece of the big puzzle of of everything, and we wanna do what we can to preserve it.

Jenny:

And it's been so special to hear from people saying, like, I am so happy that I've been able to submit photos and be a part of this work, be a part of the project. I think it it just it's helping to bring people together. It's helping to raise awareness and and getting people involved in just the conversation of what do we want our history to be and what do we want to learn about for the future. So things are really scary and stressful a lot of the time, but I just feel a lot of joy and hope when I think about all those people that are helping.

Linda:

Yeah. I definitely wanna echo that. For our for Data Rescue Project, it's really recognizing building awareness of the importance of public data and and and why it matters and how much it infuses our life. And I think for us, this is the only one campaign that we're involved in, but it's one that is so important for our our national history just as much as the public data that we support outside that. So being able to continue to tell our stories and and tell the stories of all the nation, of all the peoples who are in our nation, I think is is what I get most out of this.

Linda:

I it's and to echo Jenny, hearing people talk about how much this has helped them get through some difficult times, I think it it also has meant a lot and it's given me hope for how we can fill the gaps in for this nine months and next three years that we have left.

Sam:

Yeah. For sure. Yeah. We write about a lot of, to put it mildly, things that are happening in the news. Bummer news is a lot of the the beat that we're on because a lot of deck is going that way.

Sam:

So it is really nice to to see something that people can get involved in, and it it is it's an optimistic project. Even though it's inspired by, like, a bummer of an executive order, I think it means a lot to people to be able to get involved directly in something like this. It's very, like, tangible that they can see directly, like, this is I helped do this. So thank you both so much for your work. I'm gonna link to the project and to Data Rescue Project as well in the show notes, but thank you so much.

Sam:

This has been fantastic.

Linda:

Thank you for having us.

Jenny:

Thank you.

Linda:

Thank you. And all the support for media. It's been really great.

Sam:

Yeah. No. Thank we can't write about this stuff without, people like you doing it. As a reminder, four four media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to four four media and directly support our work, please go to 44media.co.

Sam:

You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we'll talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That really helps us out.

Sam:

This has been four four media. We'll see you again next time.