A law library saves a copy of every dataset on data.gov
Harvard's Library Innovation Lab releases an archive of the US government's public datasets, signed so each file can be proved genuine.
Picture made for ABURA Bureau.
On 6 February 2025 the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School released its archive of data.gov, the US government's catalogue of public data. The collection holds over 311,000 datasets, some 16 terabytes, gathered during 2024 and 2025, and is updated daily as new datasets appear.
It is the first release of a wider data vault project to preserve and authenticate public datasets for research and policy. Each file carries a record of where it came from and a digital signature, so anyone citing it later can show it is the same file that was first published. The lab also released its software, so other institutions can build archives of their own.
The lesson reaches beyond government. Data kept in one place, by one keeper, can vanish when priorities change, a server is switched off or a team moves on. A second copy, with its origins recorded, is what lets it be used and trusted years later. That holds for a public catalogue, and for a company's archive too.
