LibGuides: Cornell-in-Washington: Finding Data

Selected Sources

PolicyMap
GIS mapping services from PolicyMap captures data in visually powerful ways through custom demographic maps, tables, reports and an analysis tool, Analytics. Available data includes demographics, home sale statistics, health data, mortgage trends, school performance scores and labor data like unemployment, crime statistics and city crime rates.
Social Explorer
Social Explorer reports include a wide variety of historical and modern data from the U.S. Census, the American Community Survey, the American Religious Bodies (ASARB), and InfoGroup for latest religion data (2009). This tool allows users to create reports and download data in convenient formats.
Please note: There is a free version, findable via a web search, but the Cornell library subscription access offers more. Use the link above to access the Cornell library subscription.

Strategies for Finding Statistics and Data

Many federal organizations and international government organizations are posting statistics to their websites, but that doesn't guarantee that you can discover the statistics you need simply by searching the web. The information may be deep within an online database structure not exposed to search engines. In addition, the library subscribes to a number of statistical databases, such as PolicyMap, Social Explorer and CEIC data manager, to name a few. Don't hesitate to Ask a Librarian for suggestions. We're happy to help, and it may save you some time.

Search tips:

To identify some of the federal agencies, organizations and IGOs that gather and publish statistics, start with the library Guide to International and US Statistics Sources.
Need to dig deeper? Search the compendia, indexes and portals to statistics listed on this guide, under U.S. or International.
Another, very useful, strategy for finding data sources is to look for articles referencing relevant data sources.

Here are two examples of this kind of search, the first in PAIS Index, a public policy article database, and the second in Environment Index, covering environmental policy and studies.

In PAIS, a database in the Proquest interface, enter your topic words or phrases and the string: (data OR statistics OR table) in parentheses., e.g.
LGBT and health and "united states" and (data or statistics or table).
In Environment Index, a database in the EBSCO interface, enter your topic terms or phrases. On a separate line add the terms -- data OR statistics OR table.

Go to Article Databases to find relevant subject database or Ask a Librarian!