Finding Data Sets
Milner Library has a variety of subscription data sets and free, online data set options available at A-Z Databases: Statistics and Data Sets.
Google: Dataset Search
Google's search engine for over 25,000,000 datasets
Search Limiters
- Last Updated - choose from "Past month," "Past year" (in this example), or "Past three years"
- Download Format - choose from tabular, document, image, text, archive, structured other
- Usage rights - choose from "Commercial use allowed" or "Non-commercial use allowed"
- Topic - choose from "Humanities," "Social sciences," "Life sciences," "Agriculture," "Natural sciences," "Geo sciences," "Computing," "Architecture and urban planning," and "Engineering"
- Free - choose this option if you only want to look at free data
Kaggle
Kaggle provides access to over 400,000 "high-quality public datasets. Everything from avocado prices to video game sales."
https://www.kaggle.com/datasets
Available Filters
- Tag
- File Size
- File Types: CSV, JSON, SQLite, BigQuery
- Licenses: Creative Commons, GPL, Open Database, Other
- Usability Rating: 8.00 or higher, 9.00 or higher, 10.00
- Highly Vote For: Learning, Research, Application, Well-documented, Well-maintained, Clean data, Original, High-quality notebooks, LLM Fine-Tuning
Publicly Available International and National Data Resources
- data.census.gov
Search U.S. Census data covering population, housing, industry, and business. Create visual geographical maps based on data retrieved.
- Data.gov
This is the home of the United States federal government’s open data. There are over a third of a million datasets available from a wide variety of topics, such as agriculture, climate, energy, local government, maritime, ocean. The site includes data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more.
- UNdataSearch and download data from international statistical databases on a wide range of topics including agriculture, crime, communication, development assistance, education, energy, environment, finance, gender, health, labor market, manufacturing, national accounts, population and migration, science and technology, tourism, transport and trade.
Publicly Available State and Local Data Resources
- City of Bloomington: GIS (AGO)GIS data tracking infrastructure conditions, showing routes and schedules, etc.
- County of McLean GISProvides access to county-level maps and apps on a variety of topics, including elections, infrastructure, land, parks, etc.
- Data.Illinois.Gov"[F]ind data across state, find facts about your state, lets you create maps and graphs, and lets you freely download the data for your own analysis. Many of these datasets are updated daily, and some even more often."
- McLean County GIS ConsortiumConsortium of the City of Bloomington, McLean County, and Town of Normal that provides access to GIS data and apps; open data on community safety, education, housing, land records, natural resources, recreation, and transportation; and printable maps.
- Town of Normal - Open DataTown of Normal provides datasets, maps and applications, and story maps in several categories: budget and finances, permits and licensing, and public safety.
Data and Social Sciences Librarian
