Changes To / Recoveries of Government Information
Jump to Section Below:
NU Tracking Efforts | Subscription Databases | Lists of Lost / Recovered Resources | Data Resources Captured | Archived US Federal Agency Websites | Tools for Data Rescue | Web Archiving - End of Term | Weekly Roundup
NU Tracking Efforts
- 2025 Federal Transition Updates Pertaining to ResearchNU Office for Research
- NU Leadership NotesSearchable by administrative officer and keyword.
- TRAC Reports This link opens in a new window
"The purpose of TRAC is to provide the American people — and institutions of oversight such as Congress, news organizations, public interest groups, businesses, scholars, and lawyers — with comprehensive information about staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government."
TRAC = Transactional Records Access ClearinghouseAn example of the type of report which can be generated using TRAC Report data: First Days of Trump Administration: Did ICE Targeting Change? Feb 27, 2025
- ⚠️ ERIC database - content changes in April 2025Update on ERIC - March 14 2025
Editors of certain journals indexed in ERIC have received emails stating that the Department of Education will no longer include their journal in the ERIC database. As a result of working with the Department of Government Efficiency, ERIC will be reducing the collection by approximately 45% starting April 24, 2025.
If you have any upcoming/ongoing searches in ERIC. I suggest you run and export all results as soon as possible, and definitely before April 24. - Project 2025 Executive Action TrackerThe Center for Progressive Reform and Governing for Impact are monitoring the Trump administration’s implementation of Project 2025, tracking the authoritarian blueprint’s executive action proposals across 20 federal agencies.
- Project + 2025Policy Commons has indexed/captured reports and other items with the term “Project 2025”. Register on Policy Commons (it’s free) to view and receive updates when additional items added.
- Government Information: Eliminated, Suspended, Etc.Maintained by Ben Amata, Librarian at Sacramento State University Library
- Trump TrackersAn effort by Kelly Smith, UCSD Libraries, to collect sites that track changes made by the Trump administration.
- Silencing Science TrackerTracks government attempts to restrict or prohibit scientific research, education or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information, since the November 2016 election.
- Climate Deregulation TrackerIdentified steps taken by the Trump administration and Congress to scale back or wholly eliminate federal climate mitigation and adaptation measures. The tracker is linked to our database of climate change regulations and our two other climate regulation trackers: the Climate Reregulation Tracker covering the Biden administration and the Climate Backtracker covering the second Trump administration.
- Climate & Economic Justice Screening ToolDownloaded and rehosted prior to the end of the Biden administration, this mapping tool allows analysis of census tracts that are marginalized by under investment and overburdened by pollution. Data and geographic shapefiles are available for download.
- Thousands of U.S. Government Web Pages Have Been Taken Down Since Friday2/2/2025 NYT article (updated 2/3/25) by Ethan Singer. Methods used are described toward the end of the article under, "What the Times Did."
Archived US Federal Agency Websites
These are static pages! Examine each page to see date of website capture, typically posted top left corner, above any agency branding. For brief background on who/how/when see WebRecorder Blogpost March 25, 2025.
- GovArchive.usThese are archived websites from the US Government archived around the end of Biden’s and start of Trump’s presidential administrations, as part of the End of Term Web Archive. Our focus has been on complex and interactive websites.
- CDC Restored"RestoredCDC.org is an independent project, not affiliated with CDC or any federal entity. Visit CDC.gov for free official information. Due to archival on January 6, 2025, recent outbreak data is unavailable. Videos are not restored. Access data.restoredcdc.org for restored data. Use of this site implies acceptance of this disclaimer. "
- Climate.gov from NOAA Archivea mirror of NOAA's climate.gov archived on 1/17/25
This is a static website!! - EPA Environmental Protection Agency Archiveas a mirror of epa.gov archived 1/18/25
This is a static website!! - FEMA Federal Emergency Management Administration ArchiveMirror for fema.gov archived 1/24/25
This is a static website!! - Institute for Museum & Library Services (IMLS) Archivemirror for IMLS.gov Captured 3/20/25
This is a static website!! - US Agency for International Development (USAID) ArchiveThis webarchive version of the US AID website was created by WebRecorder on 01/16/2025, 07:05:56 AM
This is a static website!! - US Dept of Education Archivemirror for ed.gov Captured 1/18/25
This is a static website! - US Global Change Research Program Archivemirror for globalchange.gov captured 11/16/24
This is a static webpage!! - US Sea Level Change Archivemirror for sealevel-globalchange.gov Captured 1/10/25
This is a static webpage!!
- Data Rescue Project"There are many individuals, organizations, and community-based efforts to capture and preserve data in early 2025. Below are the efforts we are aware of and their collecting scopes."
This site replaces the original Google Doc created by Linda Kellam at UPenn. - Data Rescue ResourcesChecklists, tools, alternative data resources, Economic Indicators, Public Health, other resource guides, additional reading
- Data Rescue Tracker"... a collaborative tool built to catalog existing public data rescue efforts so that we can coordinate better across initiatives. ... The Data Rescue Tracker aims to provide a consolidated overview of who is downloading which dataset from which government websites."
- Data Rescue Baserow DocumentList of data rescued thus far - discussed in this blogpost
- CDC Datasets - Archived 1/28/2025Additional efforts to capture and catalog federal datasets are underway per listserv comments by employees of both ICPSR and IPUMS. [2/3/25]
- CDC Social Vulnerability Index dataData focusing on health and the environment
- US AID Demographic Health SurveysBlogpost describing rescue of the summary data and GIs vector shapefiles for country subdivisions to Data Lumos.
- Data Hoardera subReddit effort to capture US gov data, particularly CDC
- EDGI Environmental Data and Governance InitiativeEfforts to archive environmental data.
- Public Environmental Data Partners: Data + Screening ToolsA volunteer coalition .... To gather insights on what data to preserve, we reached out to our networks ... We compiled a large list of federal databases and tools, and prioritized them based on their relative impact, our confidence that we could archive them, and the relative effort it would take to obtain and archive them.
Fill out the form here to nominate data for us to preserve. - Social Determinants of Health & Place ProjectBefore datasets were pulled from federally funded websites, our team grabbed multiple datasets at risk of being lost, along with many other organizations. Datasets and guidances include:
The Center for Disease Control (CDC)
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) - A Renewed Call for Preservation of At-Risk Government DataThe University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research (ISR) and the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) are also involved with data preservation efforts and provide links to their efforts and how to participate
- Curating for Data Rescuefrom the Data Curation Network
we created an abbreviated version of the CURATE(D) steps specifically with data rescue efforts in mind. In order to maximize the utility of data that is in need of rescue, it is imperative that the data are curated and documented. - Checklist for USA federal data backups (MIT)"This checklist provides steps you can take to ensure the government data you use in your research remains accessible to you and others."
- University of Washington's GitBook for Data Rescues"This Gitbook is an information resource and customizable template for Data Rescue events. It was first developed by BKS Studio, LLC in collaboration with the University of Washington Center for Advances in Libraries, Museums, and Archives (CALMA) for Data Rescue events in Seattle in January 2025 and is available for remix and reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license."
- Data Rescue Event KitThis project contains materials for those interested in hosting data rescue events.
- End-of-Term Web ArchiveThe End of Term Web Archive captures and saves U.S. Government websites at the end of presidential administrations. The EOT has thus far preserved websites from administration changes in 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. We are currently accepting URL nominations for the End of Term 2024 Web Archive.
- Archived Presidential White House WebsitesWhite House websites are Presidential records. The official files that make up a Presidential administration's website are preserved in our Executive Office of the President Electronic Records Archive. In order for the public to easily access the websites, the National Archives has taken an additional step to "freeze" the White House websites and make them available online. Because the archived websites are hosted by the National Archives and are historical material, they are no longer updated. Any broken links (internal or external) will not be updated.
- Govwayback.comAccess historical versions of U.S. government websites from before January 20, 2025 with a simple URL change. How it works:
Take any .gov URL and add wayback.com right after .gov, and you'll be redirected to the Wayback Machine's archived version of the page.
- U.S. Government Information: Weekly RoundupThe link takes you to a page created by Kelly Smith, UCSD Libraries whose work, "...attempt[s] to provide current awareness of federal government reports and activities. The page will be updated weekly to provide links to important, newsworthy, or interesting material published during the previous week. The goal is to keep the links to a manageable number for readers, not to be a comprehensive listing. All links are captured in the Internet Archive if possible, and a list of earlier roundups is available."
Government Activities
- TRAC Reports This link opens in a new window
"The purpose of TRAC is to provide the American people — and institutions of oversight such as Congress, news organizations, public interest groups, businesses, scholars, and lawyers — with comprehensive information about staffing, spending, and enforcement activities of the federal government."
TRAC = Transactional Records Access ClearinghouseAn example of the type of report which can be generated using TRAC Report data: First Days of Trump Administration: Did ICE Targeting Change? Feb 27, 2025
Anne Zald
Anne Zald
she/her
Contact:
Anne Zald
Subjects: Government Information; Regulatory Compliance; Gender & Sexuality Studies
Northwestern University Library
1970 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Make an Appointment
Subjects: Government Information; Regulatory Compliance; Gender & Sexuality Studies
Northwestern University Library
1970 Campus Drive
Evanston, IL 60208
Make an Appointment
847-467-6441