Sue Grayson, associate professor/faculty librarian, encountered the following message on Oct. 2 while assisting a student, who needed information from ERIC, a highly respected educational research database:
Dear Users,
Due to a lapse of appropriations and the partial shutdown of the Federal Government, the systems that host www.eric.ed.gov have been shut down. Services will be restored as soon as a continuing resolution to provide funding has been enacted.
Due to a lapse of appropriations and the partial shutdown of the Federal Government, the systems that host www.eric.ed.gov have been shut down. Services will be restored as soon as a continuing resolution to provide funding has been enacted.
Fast forward…
Thanks to Katie Jezik, systems/faculty librarian, the Dwight Marvin Library is able to offer a timely, accurate analysis.
Thanks to Katie Jezik, systems/faculty librarian, the Dwight Marvin Library is able to offer a timely, accurate analysis.
Here is the most current list of all the Web sites that are down, including the Library of Congress and all of its American Memory Project primary sources and some of the places students get statistics, like census.gov:
If you’re desperate for something from a currently shutdown government website, you can give the INTERNET ARCHIVE WAYBACKMACHINE a try (http://archive.org/web/web.php). If you are not familiar with the WAYBACKMACHINE, it archives websites at specific dates and you can retrieve the information captured on that day. Please note that this works best if there’s a recent snapshot (the Library of Congress had one from a few days ago) and you intend to browse as searching won’t work.
As of 9 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 2:
- The Library of Congress buildings are closed to the public, and its website is inaccessible, except for THOMAS, Congress.gov, and Cataloger’s Desktop. However, the INTERNET ARCHIVE WAYBACKMACHINE still offers access to LC and other agencies before their websites went dark.
- The National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped is closed.
- All federally funded presidential libraries and all National Archives facilities are closed (except for the Federal Records Centers and the Federal Register).
- The Smithsonian and other federal museums and galleries are closed.
- Federal agencies are not engaging in social media and federal workers are barred from reading their e-mail during the shutdown. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cautioned that online filing and receipt of surface mail is suspended and that filing deadlines are extended until the day after the shutdown ends.
As you can see, the government shutdown severely impacts access to government information resources — key to our students and society — which are traditionally and practically the most reliable of online Internet resources! Please stay tuned for updates…
Valerie Waldin
Assistant Professor/Librarian
Published: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 12:08:22 +0000 by v.waldin