NOTICE
With the January 20, 2025 change in presidential administrations, data on many government web sites has disappeared or is no longer accessible. There are many efforts underway to try to preserve and make historical and current government data available to researchers and the public. In this guide we've compiled a list of articles about these efforts, recommended best practices, data preservation repositories, and alternative resources to assist Hamilton researchers.
ARTICLES
- Elliott, Vitoria, Dhruv Mehrotra and Dell Cameron. US government web sites are disappearing in real time. Wired. February 1, 2025. https://www.wired.com/story/us-government-websites-are-disappearing-in-real-time/?utm_content=bufferf0c22&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkedin&utm_campaign=aud-dev
- Lucas, Julian. The data hoarders resisting Trump's purge: Can librarians and guerilla archivists save the country's files from DOGE? The New Yorker. March 14, 2025. https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-data-hoarders-resisting-trumps-purge
- Miller, N.S. Researchers rush to preserve federal health databases before they disappear from government websites. The Journalist's Resource. January 31, 2025. https://journalistsresource.org/home/researchers-rush-to-preserve-federal-health-databases-before-they-disappear-from-government-websites/
- Nost, Eric, Gretchen Gehrke, Lourdes Vera and Steve Hansen. Why EDGI is preserving data. Patterns. January 10, 2025. https://www.cell.com/patterns/fulltext/S2666-3899(24)00323-4
- Quinn, Ryan. As data goes off-line under Trump, environmental researchers are uploading backups. Inside Higher Ed. January 29, 2025. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/research/2025/01/29/data-goes-line-under-trump-researchers-upload-backups
- Singer, Ethan. Thousands of U.S. government web pages have been taken down since Friday. The New York Times. February 2, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/upshot/trump-government-websites-missing-pages.html
BEST PRACTICES
GOVERNMENT DATA RESCUE/PRESERVATION REPOSITORIES
ALTERNATIVE DATA RESOURCES
- FRED - Federal Reserve Economic Data
- IPUMS - Census and survey data, U.S. and global
- SageData - U.S. and international data from from governmental, commercial, and private organizations
- Social Explorer - Historical U.S. Census data