The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) has been award the J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award given by the Society of American Archivists. This award honors efforts to promote greater public awareness, appreciation, or support of archival activities or programs.
EDGI is a network of academics, scientists, lawyers and other information and environmental professionals who document and advocate for the vital importance of evidence-based environmental policy. EDGI is led by a team that includes Michelle Murphy and Matt Price of the Department of History along with Patrick Keilty and Dawn Walker of the Faculty of Information. In December 2016, EDGI organized a “Guerilla Archiving” event at the University of Toronto. The event aimed to identify, preserve and archive data from the United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that was under threat of being lost or comprised by the then incoming Donald Trump administration. More than 150 volunteers attended the event to archive websites and datasets, build toolkits for future community archiving events and develop tools to preserve climate and environmental data from the EPA.
The Awards Committee notes that, “This work engages broad audiences across the world and creates awareness in communities otherwise blind to the work of archives and archivists. EDGI’s tireless effort to create a network of interdisciplinary individuals, departments, and institutions dedicated to collecting and preserving vulnerable scientific data deserves fuller awareness.”
Our Congratulations to the EDGI Team!