Tracking Government Information: Fighting Back Against Censorship and the Destruction of Public Resources

Although the news media has widely reported the current U.S. administration's removal and modification of federal websites and information, it can be challenging to understand and analyze the scope of the problem.  To help address this challenge, in early 2025, we launched the Tracking Gov Info Project, a crowdsourcing effort to track removed and modified government information and resources and to point people to archived copies of content whenever possible.

In this presentation, we will address the rapidly changing landscape of federal information and share how we developed this project.  Government information spans a wide variety of content, and includes working papers, whistleblower reports, photographs, websites, educational and health resources, policies, legislative documents, and much more.  These resources are used by patrons across public, academic, tribal, K-12, and special libraries.  Attend this webinar to learn how librarians and community members can get involved in efforts to preserve our publicly funded information, data, and history.