Data Website Rescue Efforts Finding Government Information During

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Oct 27, 2025, 3:26 AM

data website rescue efforts finding government information during

Call the Wilson Library front desk to get help by phone during open hours, or leave a voicemail for next-day follow-up. Use the web form to email us. We respond within 1 to 2 business days. Real people, no bots. All day and night, with help from librarians everywhere. Beginning in January 2025, many federal datasets, websites, and other previously accessible resources, across agencies, are being taken offline to comply with executive orders.

In some cases, press releases or data documentation have been removed; in others, entire datasets have been taken down. Evidence is growing that even datasets that remain accessible on an agency’s website may have scrubbed, corrupted, or otherwise altered information. Learn more about missing, altered or restored federal data: New York Times (02/11/25): Judge Orders C.D.C. to Temporarily Restore Deleted HHS, CDC & FDA Web Pages. The temporary restraining order was granted in response to a lawsuit filed against the federal government by Doctors for America (DFA), a progressive advocacy group representing physicians, and the nonprofit Public Citizen, a consumer...

Previously restored pages include the Atlas Tool, used by policymakers to track rates of infectious diseases such as HIV and STIs; pages that explained the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, which monitors adolescent health;... Silencing Science Tracker: joint initiative of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, tracking government attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research since the November 2016 election Librarians from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Education and Behavioral Sciences Section (EBSS) have started to record the names of journals removed from ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) as part of... This is a crowd-sourced effort led by academic librarians. To suggest a journal title for inclusion on this list, please use this google form. In January 2025, the federal government began taking down webpages, datasets, and other publicly accessible resources.

Changes to government websites are a relatively standard practice among administrations, and there are existing organizations and systems in place, such as the Internet Archive's End of Term Crawl initiative and the National Archives... This time, however, there is a broader scope of valuable resources that were or are likely to be taken down and either deleted or edited. Many of these resources, which include data from the CDC, EPA, and NIH, among other agencies, are frequently utilized by researchers, and were taken down in efforts to comply with executive orders related to... We are committed to assisting Trinity community members using federal data whose work may be impacted by these changes. This guide provides examples of potential alternative sources for federal data, and resources and tools for those interested in supporting data rescue efforts. If you have questions or need additional help beyond what is provided by this guide, please reach out to one of our librarians for assistance.

Much of the content for this guide was derived from a crowdsourced "Data Rescue Efforts" Google Doc created by the Data Rescue Project, which they have since added to their new website. Links to the original live Google Doc and the Data Rescue Project's website are provided below. This site is compliant with the W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility GuidelinesHOFSTRA UNIVERSITY Hempstead, NY 11549-1000 (516) 463-6600 © 2000-2025 Hofstra University 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 Michael Straatmann Associate Director Collection Management According to a New York Times analysis published on February 2, 2025, "more than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen U.S. government websites have been taken down ... as federal agencies rush to heed President Trump’s orders targeting diversity initiatives and 'gender ideology'.” This Guide has resources for both government information seekers and rescuers, centered around disappearing U.S.

Government data. There are more sites to be found, but this list will provide a starting point for anyone interested in the process of how our profession (and others) are responding to the current data crisis... This LibGuide is a living document that is continually being edited and improved. Much of the original content was derived from a Google document titled “Data Rescue Efforts,” which circulated in February 2020. The collaborative group behind that document has since grown into the Data Rescue Project. We gratefully acknowledge their foundational work and the ongoing, collective efforts of the data preservation community.

Below is a concise guide to help you locate US federal government data that may have been removed or redacted following the Presidential Executive Orders that went into effect on January 31, 2025. Please note that this guide only covers how to find removed information. For current or active government data, you should use Data.gov, which remains the best resource for discovering existing federal data. Before you begin searching for rescued data, it's a good idea to double-check that the information is truly gone from official sources: If you have confirmed that the data or information is missing, move on to archival resources. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is the largest web archive, capturing snapshots of websites across the internet over time.

It allows you to view websites as they appeared on specific dates in the past. Due to the change in administration, some federal sites along with information may be missing from the public record. Below are some resources to help you locate missing government information. Off-campus? Please use the Software VPN and choose the group UCIFull to access licensed content. For more information, please Click here

Software VPN is not available for guests, so they may not have access to some content when connecting from off-campus. The SCU Government Information research guide provides guidance on how to access government information on the federal government, California, and Bay Area levels. This research guide has a different focus. Since the start of the new Trump administration, hundreds of federal data sets and government websites have gone offline without warning, sometimes returning with major changes and sometimes not returning at all. This guide will focus upon what is happening currently and efforts by many organizations to archive and preserve federal government information. Many of the changes in government information availability are aligned with Project 2025 (see link at left).

If you want a better understanding of what information might disappear or be changed going forward, reading the document might provide a good roadmap. Credit: This guide draws heavily from the Finding Government Information during the 2025 Administration Transition research guide at the University of Minnesota Libraries. Used with permission. 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053 (408) 554-4000

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