Have a look at "broadcast values/sets".
Not sure if that solves you problem, but you could do:
DataSet<String> stringSet = ...
DataSet<String> first = stringSet.first();
DataSet myNewSet = stringSet.map(myMapFnc).withBroadcastSet(first,"first value");
This distributes the first DataSet to all Mapper functions and you can read and use the value.
Cheers, Fabian