U.S. Federal Government Information: Disappearing U.S. Government Data

We will continue to monitor these databases and others. Updates will be provided as they are available. Contact a Subject Specialist for help finding and searching literature in these areas.

• ERIC: The work of indexing and adding content to ERIC will continue, but will be scaled back.
  • Ways to access archived versions of ERIC via the Internet Archive.
• USDA AGRICOLA: Canceled subscriptions carried by the National Agriculture Library mostly from university or society presses.
• National Criminal Reference Justice Reference Service Abstracts (NCJRS): unavailable due to executive orders.

The majority of the resources listed here are from the Data Rescue Project. Click here you can access a comprehensive list of government data maintainers put together by the Data Rescue Project. You can also follow them on BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/datarescueproject.org.

• Archival FRED (ALFRED) - ALFRED® allows you to retrieve vintage versions of economic data that were available on specific dates in history.

• Census Reporter – is a free, open-source platform focused on making American Community Survey (ACS) data more accessible, including the recent upload of the 2022 1-Year ACS data
• End of Term Crawl - The main coordinated effort to archive websites, but datasets have been more of a challenge.
• Environmental Data Governance Initiative (EDGI) - They have been focused on environmental data and a good organization to follow for updates.
• Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) - FRED is an online database consisting of hundreds of thousands of economic data created and maintained by the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.  Includes tools for data research.
• Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) – for mapping users, the GIS vendor publishes a number of U.S. Census Bureau data sets, including the ACS, through its ArcGIS Online Platform
• IPUMS – provides census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space.
• Data.gov - complete - rescued by Harvard University Law School LIbrary Innovation Lab - They will regularly update this resource.
• ICPSR Data Lumos  - DataLumos is an ICPSR archive for valuable government data resources. ICPSR has a long commitment to safekeeping and disseminating US government and other social science data.
• Public Environmental Data Project  - A coalition committed to preserving and providing public access to federal environmental data. 
• Data Liberation Project  run by BigLocalNews and MuckRock
• Datasets in Dataverse - Includes CDC's Social Vulnerability Index data.  Most of what's being placed here is data focusing on health and the environment.
• Silencing Science Tracker - joint initiative of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. It tracks government attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research, education or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information.
• Wayback Machine   - Initiative of the Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Other projects include Open Library & archive-it.org.
• Data Hoarder - is coordinating community efforts to rescue data

The University of Nebraska - Lincoln Libraries are a Congressionally designated depository for U.S. Government documents. Public access to Government documents is guaranteed by public law (Title 44 U.S.C.).

302 Love Library South
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, NE 68588-4100

402-472-2562

governmentinfo@unl.edu

Linda Novotny
Documents Specialist

Ana Gomez
Documents Associate

Michael Straatmann
Associate Director
Collection Management