Those who have recently visited Bertrand Library’s research database may have noticed a statement highlighted in a yellow box and titled U.S. Government Data Availability. The statement reads:
“See the library’s Government Information Data Rescue guide to learn about access to publicly available government data. The current situation is in flux; we, along with many other academic institutions and the library and archives community, are monitoring the situation. This guide will be updated as we identify additional resources.”
The Bucknellian reached out to librarians Katie Akateh and Carrie Pirmann to learn more about the situation and the data rescue guide.
“Every administration has different agendas and priorities which can drive changes to publicly available information,” they explained. “During every transition in a political administration, there is a risk of elimination of some publicly available data and information. In fact, the End of Term Archive has worked to archive public government websites since 2008 because of this phenomenon.”
In addition to this trend, the Trump Administration’s first term was taken into consideration, which saw the elimination of climate change data and information.
“Initial data rescue efforts in 2017 focused on saving these datasets, and, by and large, data related to other agencies was not taken down,” Akateh and Pirmann continued. “However, in the 2025 Trump Administration, we have seen a more widespread targeting and removal of publicly available data across a number of agencies.
“In collaboration with other information professionals, we are trying to predict potential data that is at risk and have focused our efforts on locating alternatives for students and faculty at Bucknell. As of today, this situation continues to evolve, and we have not seen a slowing of threats to publicly available data. We will continue to monitor and respond to the situation as it progresses.”
Akateh and Pirmann went on to explain some of the larger concerns of this data potentially becoming less accessible or entirely unavailable and why students and other campus members should pay attention to the constantly evolving situation.
“All United States government agencies collect data which help us understand the current state of the nation, its population and demographics, economics, environmental issues, health, education, crime and so on,” Akateh and Pirmann elaborated. “These datasets are routinely used by researchers, policy makers and state governments for research and data-driven decision making. Without access to these datasets, researchers cannot effectively conduct research or monitor the latest trends in areas such as climate change or disease outbreaks.”
“Policy makers lose the ability to accurately track trends in the economy, education, healthcare and many other critical areas. Government data, specifically Census data, also underpins apportionment of representatives from each state to the U.S. House of Representatives. Faculty and students at Bucknell and academic institutions across the country also regularly use government datasets in their research and teaching.”
It is also noted on the website that the database guide is a copy of one available through the American University library.
“We wanted to address this situation in a prompt manner,” said Akateh and Pirmann. “American University was one of the first to publicly share a library guide with resources to address disappearing public datasets. They shared their guide under a creative commons license, so we were able to copy it with attribution on our website. Since first sharing the guide, we have modified it with new resources we’ve discovered as the situation has evolved.”
While the Bucknell library staff have not been formally involved in the larger Data Rescue Project, they have drawn from their resources compiled on their website. They have also used their Data Rescue Tracker “to help us identify who is rescuing datasets that are commonly used by faculty and student researchers here.”
Bucknell community members who have questions about the availability of government data can fill out the library’s survey or email Katie Akateh at ka025@bucknell.edu and Carrie Pirmann at cmp016@bucknell.edu.
