Recent reports of datasets no longer accessible from public websites, such as data.gov, have prompted questions and some concerns among the academic community. It is important to note that this is not a new phenomenon. Public data sets, including the 300,000 datasets hosted or linked on data.gov, are constantly evolving. Access to data sets can be compromised for a variety of reasons. Sometimes links are removed from government websites by government officials, but in other cases, because the government website is only an aggregator, the underlying dataset source may be corrupt or unavailable.
Although loss of datasets on public websites like data.gov will always be an issue, keep in mind that the dataset may exist elsewhere on federal government websites or they may be re-hosted elsewhere. Datasets are also frequently downloaded by researchers and students before they are removed. Federal publications, including datasets, are generally not protected by copyright. Because of this, there are nonprofit organizations that work to archive datasets. WSU Libraries is a member of one such organization: ICPSR (Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research), which archives and makes available political and social science research data. Federal agencies have also deposited datasets directly with ICPSR. Because ICPSR is managed by the University of Michigan, changes to data.gov won’t affect existing datasets ICPSR. ICPSR can be accessed from WSU Libraries’ A-Z databases webpage.
Have additional questions or need help with a government dataset that is no longer available? Contact your discipline’s subject librarian or Ginger Williams, the WSU Libraries’ collections strategist, for assistance.
