LibGuides: Social Sciences Data Resources: Alternate US Data Sources

Alternate Sources for US Government Data

The resources on this page include repositories where US government data has been backed-up, large projects and public archives that serve as alternatives to federal data sources, and subscription-based library databases. Visit these sources in the event that federal data becomes unavailable.

Internet Archive

Wayback Machine
Includes several decades of websites that have been crawled and copied. If a website's link is broken, paste the URL in the Wayback Machine and open an older copy. You may be able to retrieve documents and datasets from the archived webpages.

Government Data Back-ups

DataLumos
A broad-based archive of US federal datasets, maintained by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). Recommended place to check first.
Data Rescue Project
A large, non-partisan effort to back-up and preserve US government data, led by librarians and archivists. They maintain a large list of archives and other back-up efforts.
Archive of Data.gov
A large effort by the Harvard Law School and Library Innovation Lab to scrape and save all datasets stored in data.gov. Some series are also available in the Dataverse.
Public Environmental Data Project
A targeted, non-profit effort to archive environment and climate-related data.
UCSB Archive of Public Datasets
UC Santa Barbara's archive consists of large environmental and health datasets.
SciOp
An initiative affiliated with the Safeguarding Research and Culture Project, a collection of BitTorrents and feeds that capture big datasets.

Alternative Sources - Public Websites

IPUMS
Large project at the University of Minnesota that archives summary and microdata from the US Census, as well as several health and education surveys.
Missouri Census Data Center
Provides user-friendly applications for generating profiles and creating US census data extracts for the entire country (not just Missouri).
FRED
Extensive database of socio-economic, finance, and housing data with charting capabilities. Maintained by the St. Louis Federal Reserve (which has a degree of independence from the executive branch).
County Health Rankings and Roadmaps
Project at the University of Wisconsin that collates and publishes socio-economic and health data for counties and states.
City Health Dashboard
Project at NYU Langone Health that collates and publishes socio-economic and health data for cities.
NCAR Research Data Archive
Climatological and environmental data from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO.

Alternative Sources - Library Databases

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
Provides access to more than 250,000 datasets in the social and behavioral sciences. The database hosts 21 specialized collections of data in education, aging, criminal justice, substance abuse, terrorism, and other fields.
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), established in 1962, is an integral part of the infrastructure of social science research. ICPSR maintains and provides access to a vast archive of social science data for research and instruction. To ensure that data resources are available to future generations of scholars, ICPSR preserves data, migrating them to new storage media as changes in technology warrant. In addition, ICPSR provides user support to assist researchers in identifying relevant data for analysis and in conducting their research projects.
This database DOES NOT work with EZProxy. Please download the SSL-VPN client to your computer from software.brown.edu to access this resource from off-campus.
PolicyMap
A data and web mapping application that provides access to thousands of indicators related to housing, crime, mortgages, health, jobs, demographics and education, current.
Current; Policymap is an online data and mapping application that gives access to over 15,000 indicators related to housing, crime, mortgages, health, jobs, demographics and education. Data are available at all common geographies (address, block group, census tract, zip code, county, city, state, MSA) as well as unique geographies like school districts and political boundaries. Data come from both public and proprietary sources. Many of the public files are available for download. Through PolicyMap, you can access all data in interactive maps, tables, charts, reports and through a unique analytic tool. You may also upload your own address level data and share your data and interactive maps with others.Tutorials.

Alternative Sources - Medical and Health Literature

Alternatives to PubMed
Alternatives to the PubMed database, compiled by the BUL's Health and Biomedical Library Services team.
Alternatives to ClinicalTrials.gov
Alternatives to ClinicalTrials.gov, compiled by the BUL's Health and Biomedical Library Services team.

BUL Archiving Efforts

US Federal Govt Data Backup
GitHub repository with Python screen scraping scripts, and a reference to a public GLOBUS endpoint for accessing data archived by the Brown University Library.

BUL's Federal Data Preservation Group

Members of Brown University can contact us if you have any questions or concerns about the preservation of federal datasets.

Frank Donnelly, Head of GIS & Data Services (CLEAR Data Services)
Cass Wilkinson Saldaña, Social Science Data Librarian (CLEAR Data Services)
Laura Haygood, Health Sciences Librarian for Biomedical Research Support (HBLS)
Kelsey Sawyer, Health Sciences Librarian for Public Health (HBLS)
Patrick Rashleigh, Head of Digital Scholarship Technology Services (CDS)
Khanh Vo, Digital Humanities Specialist (CDS)