The best places to search depend on the type of data you are looking for. If you are looking for census information or provincial/federal data, the open data catalogues listed in RRU’s Statistics and data resources guide are an excellent place to start. The guide also collects various international data catalogues where you can find social science, georeferenced, and global development datasets, among others.
If you have found a survey description that seems as though it may have data you’d like to explore, see if you can find the original dataset posted online. If the researcher is affiliated with a Canadian institution, you may be able to find the dataset in Borealis. You may search for the name of the article directly. If you do not find the dataset you’re looking for, you can also email the researcher directly and ask if they can provide you with the data and its matching documentation. You can usually find a researcher’s contact information in an article itself or by Googling their name and academic field.
Google Dataset Search searches for freely available datasets across the Internet. You can search for datasets on almost any topic. For example, if you’re searching for data on energy development in Canada, you could try the following sample searches:
“energy development” Canada
“energy development” site:canada.ca
“energy development” site:alberta.ca
Another approach is to try searching Google by adding the file extensions .sav or .sps to your search, or even just the word ‘data’. You could also use the Advanced Search function to narrow your search to .org sites. It may be that narrowing to nonprofits or government sites may be useful. Following along the lines of the previous example, you could try the following sample searches:
"energy development" Canada data
"energy development" Canada data site:.org
"energy development" Canada data site:.gc.ca
"energy development" Canada .sav
If you would like library assistance in searching for datasets on the open web, please contact RRU’s Data Services Librarian via LibAnswers or book an appointment.
