My name is Rosalia Iriye, graduating Master in Library and Information Science (MLIS) at University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) and Digital Collections Manager at the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE), and am grateful to have attended on scholarship RDAP 2026 Virtual Summit. Amidst federal dataset and funding terminations, attending has been guiding in my understanding of research data librarianship in public research institutions.

The work of the Data Rescue Project’s (DRP) framed the virtual conference in keynote, charting the volunteer-led organization’s development this past year preserving terminated federal datasets. I’ve been fortunate to have volunteered with DRP prior, and valued learning about the networks of support and how project management workflows responsively develop in a rapid timeframe. DRP’s Steering Committee described DRP’s infrastructure drawing from core organizations like RDAP Association, IASSIST, and Data Curation Network. I’ve been impressed by the scalability of DRP’s work, between automated solutions in scripting and minimal crosswalking to crowdsourcing metadata to broader groups of volunteers.

It’s evident how pivotal collaborations like DRP have been through public research data. The first sessions explored the use of such open data, beginning with Beth Jorasz and DRP co-founder Lena Bohman’s “How Should We Teach About Federal Data Now” in research data librarianship instruction. Madison Golden and Lorelei Rutledge’s “Tailoring Data Acquisition Support for Business Students in an Era of Missing Data” provided strategies for researchers and librarians alike in verification of data sources like DRP or regional alternatives. Alaina L. Pearce’s “Data as Scholarship: A Practical Framework for Engaging Researchers in Open Data” also reframed data management as a research product, which has been guiding the pathways in advocating for digital preservation. Andrew Mullins and Anwen Tormey “The Emmett Till Project in New Orleans: Creating a Community Dataset of Racially-Motivated Cold Case Homicides from Physical Archives,” highlighted the project’s unique positionality working directly with archivists under a government mandate and collaboration surrounding public funding cuts.

Overall in the Summit’s theme “Practical, Personalized, Impactful: Research Data in the Real World”, I reflect largely on the work of information professionals within federal repositories and in rescuing these datasets, and the need for coordination across rescue projects and workflow documentation. I’ve valued exploring data management practices building on and beyond federal support, as a dedication to open infrastructure and digital preservation.