Sunday Reflections: When the Information Just Disappears

As a librarian, I have dedicated myself to helping people find information. I’ve spent years at Reference Desks answering important, life changing questions both in person and over the phone. I’ve talked with people who needed to know what their options were following horrific medical diagnosis, in the face of financial crisis, and as they were just trying to make their lives a little bit better.
I have stood in front of classes of students and told them about analyzing websites and the accuracy of information. And how information is important not only to personal life choice, but to democracy. We used to tell students that government websites were some of the most dependable information out there. We were taught and we taught that you could rely on government data and government websites. But that started to change several years ago, and this past week several government websites went dark. The information just disappeared.*
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT



As someone who talks about information access access and information literacy, this is very troubling. Troubling is perhaps a bit of an understatement. This is five-alarm fire levels of warning about encroaching authoritarianism and the right for us as citizens to make informed decisions for themselves and their country.
The United States Census is important data. Data that is collected and paid for with our tax dollars. It’s not their information to take away, it’s ours. All of ours. It’s not just the government that uses that data. Community planners, school districts, and yes, even libraries, use that data to make informed decisions. It helps us to better understand who our community is and how we can best serve them. Our patrons have been coming into our libraries for years using this data to research their family history and lineage. It’s just one example of the personal and global data that is currently being scrubbed from the web.
The idea that the data the White House is scrubbing belongs to us is, in many ways, a revelation to many (see note below).** It was to me. I saw this idea shared on Blueksy and thought yes, this is true. And as I saw people discussing it, I realized how this is all a bigger theft than even I realized. The truth is, scientific study funded by the government is ours, and the data it finds belongs to us. Every U.S. Census. Every committee report. Every law written, every report shared, every .gov page on the Internet. The government at all levels is funded in part by us, the taxpayers, which is why it is called “government by the people and for the people”. Elected representatives, government data, all those Internet reports and pages of data and research that we have come to rely on – It is, in fact, ours. And they have come in the dark of the night and scrubbed it because they don’t want us to know what it says so we can’t hold them accountable to it.

Perhaps most troubling of all, the United States Constitution disappeared from the White House website. The very document that our elected representatives are sworn to uphold and protect is just . . . gone. That probably speaks volumes. You can find the Constitution in a lot of places, including finding a lot of books on what it is and what it means in your local library. You should probably read up on it, because these are dark days when the White House feels comfortable removing this seminal document from its online presence.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
Democracy can not survive without access to accurate information. Thankfully, I have read that there are people working right now around the clock to preserve the data before it’s all purged. And right now, your library is working to provide you access to that information. Use your library, support your library; we are learning in real time that everything we once valued is on the chopping block and that no matter what my professional ideals are, the information can just suddenly disappear. We must all fight for our right to be informed. And one of the simplest ways to fight against this is to simply stand up for libraries, stand against book bans***, and to demand that we have the access to information.
This post was updated to include references and resources for the discussion above. Also, I had a lot of typos that needed fixed.
*These are screenshots of just some of the announcements I saw this past weekend about pages disappearing. AP News has a good list of government websites that have disappeared. Wired also talks about this some.
**Kendrawrites.com posted on Bluesky: “It’s actually theft of taxpayers money when websites go dark. We paid for that data.” Posted on January 31, 2025 at 6:55 PM. This is one of the discussion items I saw and followed this weekend about this concept, which helped solidify my understanding of how to discuss why the erasure of this information matters to me not just as a librarian, but as a tax paying citizen.
*** You can learn more about book bans and how to stand against them at Pen.org. EveryLibrary is also doing a lot of support libraries and fight against book bans.
Filed under: Sunday Reflections

About Karen Jensen, MLS
Karen Jensen has been a Teen Services Librarian for almost 32 years. She created TLT in 2011 and is the co-editor of The Whole Library Handbook: Teen Services with Heather Booth (ALA Editions, 2014).
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
SLJ Blog Network
How to Do Just About Everything in 2025
Good Golden Sun: A Conversation with Brendan Wenzel
MegaGhost Vol. 1 | Review
Goodbye for now
When Book Bans are a Form of Discrimination, What is the Path to Justice?
ADVERTISEMENT
Karen,
I greatly appreciate all that you have written in this post today. In two hours my Golden Retriever Therapy dog and I will begin our weekly session with students at the University of Arizona in Tucson. . . . stress relief for students missing their pets at home. In the past we have felt free and legally able to discuss all topics, share diverse opinions and practice respect for all types of diversity.
Please keep researching and reporting. Information such as found here and your desire to share what you find are essential.
Thanks for the great reporting. One thing I did notice missing are links to where the information is supposed to be. I’ve never been to the us government website and don’t even know what it would be called but for having a dot gov domain! If the links were included in the report it would also drive up the hit count on the pages and perhaps cause others to notice.