There is a long tradition in the govinfo librarian world of assuring access and longevity of published government information. From 1981 until 1998, Anne Heanue and the fine folks at the Washington Office of the American Library Association (ALA) published an amazing series called Less Access to Less Information by and about the U.S. Government, a chronology of efforts to restrict and privatize government information. FGI has long tracked on this issue as well.
And now in the time of the 2nd Trump administration and its well-known attack on federal agencies and the public information and data that they publish, a new and extremely valuable project has started. The Tracking Removed and Modified Government Information & Resources Project (aka Tracking Gov Info Project) is looking to compile a comprehensive list of government websites, documents, articles, reports, etc. that have been removed or modified by the current administration. Anyone who encounters a missing resource can enter it using their submission form. Entries can be viewed publicly on the spreadsheet. There are already 82 instances posted!
The project is currently led by government information and social science librarians from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (my alma mater!).
I’m really glad to see efforts like TGP coming online in this really tenuous time for the public domain.
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