On the Same (Web)Page: Using LibGuides to Connect Researchers to Government Information and Data Rescue Projects | Ivey | DttP: Documents to the People

"Like many library workers, American University (AU) librarians have been concerned about the data loss, website removal, and untracked edits to government information taking place in the current Trump administration. Our researchers use government data, our students prioritize internships with the federal government, and our work as educators of future civil servants relies on access to federal data. Shortly after the news broke that Executive Order No. 14168 had led to the removal of websites and documents from government websites, we set out to find others that were collecting and retaining government data so that we could connect those efforts to our community.1 Our goals included ensuring that ongoing research projects could remain active and that librarians and faculty at AU who wanted to assist with data preservation efforts knew what steps to take.

In the search for a communication tool to advance our goals, LibGuides, a content management platform published by Springshare that is widely used by academic libraries, emerged as a clear choice.2 LibGuides are easy to edit, can be managed by multiple users, and are already trusted by our researchers. Our guide “Government Information Data Rescue” (hereafter Data Rescue Guide) was built to connect our campus community to the work of many librarians, archivists, government employees, and citizens.3 Communications from faculty and students to the library began as soon as news broke of websites and datasets coming down in the wake of E.O. 14168.4 The Data Rescue Guide allowed us to leverage the strength of the library community to support those requests and plan next steps.

Beyond meeting the immediate need, the Data Rescue Guide became a vector for conversations in the library and with our campus partners about the need for data preservation, the limits of our work, and what it will mean for the relationship between researchers and the federal government moving forward. The redaction of data, text, and pages from the federal government’s information space is more than a loss of content; these deliberate actions are a form of censorship led by the executive branch of our government. Furthermore, as content is “restored” by the current administration, (whether because of an action by the courts, due to the outcomes of a lawsuit, or for other reasons) with no clear documentation of redactions and changes, citizens and researchers are left without confidence that prior research is presented in its proper context, or that future outputs can be trusted in the same way as their predecessors."