Backing Up US Federal Databases

If you want to help save US federal web pages and databases, here’s some advice from Naseem Miller:

• Save existing websites to the Wayback Machine. The easiest way to do this is by installing the Wayback Machine extension for your browser. The add-ons and extensions are listed on the left-hand panel of the website’s homepage.

• To find missing websites, go to Wayback Machine and type in the website’s URL in the search bar.

• If you’re concerned that certain websites or web pages may be removed, you can suggest federal websites and content that end in .gov, .mil and .com to the End of Term Web Archive.

• You can suggest federal climate and environmental databases to Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.

• You can suggest databases to The Data Liberation Project, which is run by MuckRock and Big Local News.

• For CDC data: tell science journalist Maggie Koerth which CDC data you’ve downloaded and whether you’ve made them publicly available.

For more on the situation, go here:

• Naseem Miller, Researchers rush to preserve federal health databases before they disappear from government websites, The Journalist’s Resource, 31 January 2025.

• Library Innovation Lab Team, Preserving public U.S. federal data, 30 January 2025.

It seems the Azimuth Climate Data Backup Project came 8 years too early—but it looks like more people are working on backups this time.