With the transition to the new government in the United States, we are seeing some major changes in the US federal information landscape.
This blog post aims to bring together information for LSHTM staff and students on alternative sources of removed information, as well as some sources you can follow for updates. This is not a definitive list and will be updated as we receive reliable information.
Finding copies of publications which have been removed
The best place to look for information removed from the internet is the Wayback machine.
The Wayback Machine is part of the Internet Archive which, as the name suggests, aims to archive the internet. You can search for a web address and view the copy of that website on a particular day and at a particular time. The Internet Archive have a help page with lots of useful information on how to use the site.
When you view a website via the Wayback machine, you should be able to view text and images, and click links to related pages, including PDF files. However any site search tools will not work. This is due to the types of files archived by the service.
End of Term Web Archive
The End of Term Web Archive is a collaborative project which systematically saves U.S. Government websites during the transition period between administrations.
As of 5 March 2025 the USAID website has been removed. Therefore, all USAID publications are no longer available from their website. Some publications from the CDC have been removed from their website, although the site is still up and contains information on some topics.
Libraries have published guides on alternative sources of information. I have linked some below:
Finding copies of datasets which have been removed
As well as publications, many datasets, tools and other data are no longer available.
A number of efforts are taking place to backup data and make it available elsewhere. The Data Rescue Project are trying to document these efforts. A list can be found at https://www.datarescueproject.org/current-efforts/.
Libraries have published guides on alternative sources of information. I have linked some below:
Keeping up to date
There are a number of ways to keep up to date with developments. We have tried to list reliable sources only. However, please check information carefully as, unsurprisingly, there is a lot of misinformation around. Many of these sources list changes across US Government, not just medical information sources, so they may be of use to others across LSHTM.
2025 Administration Transition Information & Resources from the Council on Government Relations
GovSpeak Errors from UC San Diego Library
Silencing Science Tracker from the Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law at Columbia University and the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
U.S. Government Information: Trump Trackers from UC San Diego Library
(also Medline and MeSH)
Please note that as of 05 March 2025 there has been no reported change to the editorial oversight or content management of PubMed/Medline or to its update schedule or distribution. However, given what we know has happened in other federally-funded information sources, PubMed/Medline may cease to be as reliable as it has been and we may need to pivot towards using other literature sources.
PubMed and Medline are datasets which are compiled and distributed by the National Library of Medicine, which is part of the NIH National Centre for Biotechnology Information. The databases are very similar, see MEDLINE, PubMed, and PMC (PubMed Central): How are they different? for an explanation of the differences and similarities.
There are a number of different ways that PubMed/Medline may become less useable:
- The underlying infrastructure may become less robust. This may lead to slower search times and longer downtime. Security of NCBI usernames and passwords may be compromised. If you have an NCBI account, you may wish to increase the strength of your password. As always, do not use the same username/password for multiple accounts.
- Collection policy may change. This may lead to journals of questionable quality being added to the dataset, or journals on politically charged topics being removed. Be aware that individual articles may be added or removed. Again, this is more likely to occur if on topics which are politically sensitive.
- Indexing policy may change. Articles in PubMed/Medline are tagged by subject. The subject scheme used is called MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). These tags, or index terms, are used to help researchers find articles on their subject. Indexing policy around politically sensitive subjects may change, resulting in articles becoming more difficult to retrieve.
- Access to the database is restricted in some way. PubMed is currently available to world for free. This may change. Free access may be restricted to certain jurisdictions, or to certain types of data.
Hilda Bastian has written an excellent blog post explaining these issues: What if we can’t rely on PubMed?
Similar lists from other institutions
American University, Washington D.C. Government Information Data Rescue
University of Leicester Library: How do I find US Federal Government data?
University of Minnesota Libraries Finding Government Information during the 2025 Administration Transition
University of Exeter Library: Alternatives to United States NLM Resources
Responses from professional library organisations
- CILIP (UK Library & Information Association) released a statement on 18 February 2025. This calls for UK-based information professionals and the wider information community to ” share examples of how content, reports, datasets, evidence, and tools are being removed by US authorities”.
- The MLA (US Medical Library Association) released a position statement on 25 February 2025.
