This guide will point to resources that identify and track steps taken by the Trump administration and Congress to scale back or eliminate access to federal government information. It also provides links to groups performing data and website rescue.
Tools for Data Rescues
- Data Curation Network (DCN)
- Provides key insights for curating data and the types of questions that need to be asked. This abbreviated version of the CURATE(D): Checklist for Data Curation is meant specifically for data rescue efforts that may need to be done quickly.
- Step-by-step Guide for Data Preservation from MIT (from MIT)
- Checklist to assist with curating USA federal data rescue efforts.
- #RStats package from @ropensci.org
- gitcellar downloads and archives all repos, issues, and PRs from a GitHub organization in one shot: docs.ropensci.org/gitcellar/
- Browsertrix
- Powered by Webrecorder, Browsertrix is a service that captures everything in high fidelity and ensures that archived government websites can be presented as accurately as possible and be navigated as they originally existed.
- WebRecorder
- Has been developing open source web archiving tools, including Browsertix, for over 10 years. According to an email: has archived 8TB+ of government sites, some from the End-of-Term-Archive seed list, some from EDGI Slack requests, and many sites independently.
- ArchiveBox.io
- According to an email: has also archived government datasets from data.gov, CIBP, USCIS, NOAA, NASA, NSIDC, and more
- Awesome-datahoarding
- Provides a list of tools for web harvesting, etc.
- Awesome Web Archiving
- Another curated list of web archiving tools
- DataRescue Workflow
- This is the workflow from the original data rescue/DataRefuge project in 2017.
- Many of the tools are no longer working, but the workflow is still useful. UW used this to create their workflow above.
- The challenge with the original project was where to store and how to make discoverable the large amounts of data captured.
- Part of this effort is also housed in the Harvard Dataverse Repository and can be opened for more data deposits
- There is a CKAN instance with some of the 2017 data.
- https://govdiff.com/
- Tool created by Jerome Paulos to show side-by-side changes in government websites.
- How You Can Help Archive U.S. Government Data Right Now: Install Archive Team Warrior
- This is a reddit post, but it lists instructions for how to archive and the tools needed to be able to contribute.
- SAFE-Track: Secure Anonymous Federal Evidence, Data and Analysis Tracking
- The Data Foundation's SAFE-Track portal provides a secure, encrypted channel for documenting changes to federal evidence and data activities.
- University of Washington’s GitBook for Data Rescues
- DiffChecker
- Instantly compare any text files, whether it's code, legal documents, or a favorite sourdough recipes. Check differences by word or character and make real-time edits. Use it to compare texts pasted into the browser window or upload documents to compare. It accepts Word docs, pdfs, spreadsheets and image files. To find the differences between two versions of a website, first convert them into txt files. Find an old capture in the Wayback Machine, right click to view page source, then save as a txt file. Then do the same for the live version of the site. A website’s html/css code may not include data files of course – those may be pulled from a background database you can’t access. May not work with every website.
Last Updated: Apr 22, 2025 11:56 AM
URL: https://libguides.umn.edu/govpubs/admin