Data literacy

The Census Bureau's mission is to serve as the nation’s leading provider of quality data about its people and economy. Read what data the Census collects, how that data is used, and what other projects the Census is working on.

The Census Bureau is the federal government’s largest statistical agency. We are dedicated to providing current facts and figures about America’s people, places, and economy. Federal law protects the confidentiality of all the information the Census Bureau collects. Read the history of the Census, an overview of what the group does, what surveys the group conducts, and data tools the group provides to better navigate the data collected.

Libraries were central to helping people be counted in the 2020 Census. Now, make the data count for your library and community. Data literacy, at its most basic, involves the ability to identify, understand, communicate, and use data. The Public Library Association's (PLA) Census Data Literacy project was launched to build data literacy skills among library staff and the public and to increase awareness and use of Census data in their communities.

Search through Census records from 1790 - 1950. Federal Census records have been digitized by several of NARA's partners, and will eventually be available as well through the National Archives Catalog. Click on a Census year to start your search.

The Census Linking Project offers researchers the ability to create longitudinal datasets using historical US Census data (1850-1940). We provide links between each pair of complete-count Censuses using a wide variety of linking algorithms.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organisation that works to build better policies for better lives. Our goal is to shape policies that foster prosperity, equality, opportunity and well-being for all. Together with governments, policy makers and citizens, we work on establishing evidence-based international standards and finding solutions to a range of social, economic and environmental challenges. From improving economic performance and creating jobs to fostering strong education and fighting international tax evasion, we provide a unique forum and knowledge hub for data and analysis, exchange of experiences, best-practice sharing, and advice on public policies and international standard-setting.

Google Public Data Explorer provides public data and forecasts from a range of international organizations and academic institutions including the World Bank, OECD, Eurostat and the University of Denver. These can be displayed as line graphs, bar graphs, cross sectional plots or on maps. (Description from Wikipedia.)

The World Inequality Database (WID.world) aims to provide open and convenient access to the most extensive available database on the historical evolution of the world distribution of income and wealth, both within countries and between countries.

Dryad is an open data publishing platform and a community committed to the open availability and routine re-use of all research data. Our multi-stakeholder community of academic and research institutions, research funders, scholarly societies and publishers is committed to leading in best practices for open data sharing and reuse. They invest in Dryad for the curation, open sharing and reuse of research data in all fields.

DataONE is a community driven program providing access to data across multiple member repositories, supporting enhanced search and discovery of Earth and environmental data. DataONE promotes best practices in data management through responsive educational resources and materials. We envision researchers, educators, and the public using DataONE to better understand and conserve life on earth and the environment that sustains it.