Federal Government Shutdown Update (Updated 10/10/13)

Updated 10/4/13, 10/6/13, 10/7/13, 10/10/13

You may have noticed that some of your favorite Federal government web sites are not available due to the government shutdown.

USA.gov is still running, and has an update page summarizing Federal government services that have been affected by the shutdown: http://www.usa.gov/shutdown.shtml.

Alternate Resources:

Census Information

• The Missouri Census Data Center (http://mcdc1.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/applinks/menu.py) is mentioned as a very good source of American FactFinder Information, but don’t forget to check any of the other state data centers as well.  Like Maryland’s Data Center (http://www.mdp.state.md.us/msdc/), they will probably house some information on their own server (which should be accessible) as well as provide links to the Federal data (which might not be available).  Since the Census Bureau’s directory of state data centers is not working, just Google your state of interest plus “data center”, and it should be easy to find.
• StatsAmerica: http://www.statsamerica.org/
• Oxford University Press and the Social Explorer team will open up access to Social Explorer<http://www.socialexplorer.com/> - the premier US Census demographics website - for the next two weeks. Social Explorer offers users Census data from 1790 to 2010 and American Community Survey data from 2005 to 2012. For access to Social Explorer, simply email onlinereference@oup.com to request a username and password.
• Census/Investigative Reporters & Editors: http://census.ire.org/ 
• Census Viewer: http://censusviewer.com/free-maps-and-data-links/  

Crime Statistics

• National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (Univ. of Michigan) http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/NACJD/

Various Statistics

• Quandl (Archived Datasets from a variety of agencies) http://www.quandl.com/ 

Education (ERIC)

• EBSCOhost has made its ERIC database available during the shutdown: http://www.ebsco.com/freeERIC. 

Additional sources of information about the shutdown:

• Marcia Gorin, of Florida State University, has created a guide with additional information and updates regarding the shutdown: http://guides.lib.fsu.edu/governmentshutdown.
• Government information from non-government sources guide, USC-Aiken, Kathy Karn-Charmichael: http://researchguides.usca.edu/content.php?pid=220482&sid=2006467
• Alternate Government Research Sources, Mississippi State Univ: http://guides.library.msstate.edu/altgovsources 
• Federal Libraries affected by shutdown (courtesy Special Libraries Association: http://govinfo.sla.org/2013/10/03/federal-government-shutdown-operating-status-of-federal-libraries
• List of agencies not available at this time from Arkansas Tech University: http://blogs.atu.edu/library/2013/10/02/the-shutdown-breakdown/
• Government Shutdown Guide (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison): http://researchguides.library.wisc.edu/govshutdown 

The following is a list of some web sites that were "dark" as of 10/2/13:

• USGS.gov
• Bureau of Economic Analysis (bea.gov)
• Business.gov
• Census.gov (Maryland State Data Center, http://www.mdp.state.md.us/msdc/, has some information housed on their web site.  (However some links point to Census.gov data.)
• Copyright.gov (Website available but not being updated as of 10/7/13.)
• Data.gov
• Disability.gov
• ERIC (eric.ed.gov) - See above, under Education, for EBSCO access.
• FCC.gov
• FTC.gov
• Library of Congress (loc.gov) Up as of 10/7/13!
• NASA.gov
• National Park Service (nps.gov)
• NIMH.gov
• NIST.gov
• NOAA.gov is offline but you can still get to weather.gov 
• NSF.gov 
• Nutrition.gov 
• USDA (usda.gov)

       (Thank you to Gretchen Gould of Univ. of North Iowa for this information.)