Harvard Law Library Releases Archive of 300,000 Government Data Sets

By Raphael Satter

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A unit of Harvard University’s Law Library has announced the release of an archive containing over 300,000 government data sets. This initiative aims to safeguard essential public information during a time when President Donald Trump’s administration is systematically removing such data from the web.

The announcement was made on Thursday by the Law Library’s Innovation Lab, which is part of various efforts to rescue official figures and datasets as the Trump administration and its allies dismantle significant federal resources, effectively taking thousands of websites offline and, in some instances, deleting entire agencies.

Academics and researchers in various fields, including public health, climate studies, and sociology, have been affected as the administration removes crucial data. An article from The New York Times reported that over 8,000 government web pages had been eliminated following the presidential transition.

The Innovation Lab revealed that it has preserved 311,000 datasets, copied between 2024 and 2025, totaling approximately 16 terabytes of data. Amanda Watson, assistant dean for library and information services at Harvard Law School, emphasized the importance of public access to government information, stating, “This effort upholds our fundamental belief that government information belongs to the public.”

The Innovation Lab collaborates with other organizations to preserve government data. The San Francisco-based Internet Archive, which has been taking systematic snapshots of government websites since 2008, and the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, which rescued interactive tools for checking local pollution levels—tools recently deleted by the Trump administration—are among the groups involved.

Jack Cushman, director of the Innovation Lab, noted that the government collects invaluable data on various subjects. He stated, “That’s everything from ‘What is the weather or climate going to be?’ to ‘How are the crops growing?’ to ‘How much water is in aquifers?’ to ‘What are people dying of?’ to ‘What jobs are growing or shrinking.’ The government tracks so many things that help us understand and plan and make sense of what’s happening in the world. We wanted to ensure our patrons have access to all that information.”