OPEN DATA FIELD LIBRARYED. 2026 / 07

Ideas are not the problem. Usable data is.

An open-data field library,
ready whenever a story starts.

A public-data index for data stories, visualization, and investigative leads. Every source includes update frequency, access requirements, formats, and a question worth pursuing.

Explore the library

16 / 16 official sources verified

GLOBAL SOURCE FIELD50° N / 123° W
LIVE SIGNAL08

streams online

ARCHIVE DEPTH500+

years at maximum

PUBLIC / OPEN / TRACEABLERECEIVING
01 / SOURCES16

Verified at official sources

02 / MODES02

Historical archives · live signals

03 / THEMES06

From the planet to knowledge

04 / PAYWALLS00

No paywalls

DATASET INDEX

What do you want to follow?

“Live” covers minute, hourly, and continuously updated streams. “Historical” emphasizes long-run archives built for trends and comparison.

Open-access standard

Every entry is free to browse, query, or download. Sources requiring a free account or API key are clearly marked; licenses vary, so confirm attribution before publishing.

VERIFIED · 2026.07.27
Showing 16 of 16Order / curated
DS-001Climate & EarthLive data

USGS

USGS Earthquake Feeds

Global real-time earthquake stream

A continuous event stream of magnitude, depth, location, time, and felt reports, ready for maps and timelines.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“Are earthquakes becoming more frequent, or are we simply seeing them more clearly?”

UPDATE
Every minute
COVERAGE
Global · past hour to 30 days
ACCESS
No login
LICENSE / TYPE
U.S. public domain for USGS-produced material; third-party exceptions
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Credit “U.S. Geological Survey” and link to the original feed.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Before publishing, recheck the feed page and any item-level third-party credits or notices.

Read license basis
GeoJSONCSVATOMKML
Official source
DS-002Climate & EarthLive data

NOAA / NWS

NWS Weather Alerts

U.S. severe weather alerts

Storm, flood, heat, and fire-weather alerts with severity, affected areas, active periods, and response guidance.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“Why do cities receive different warning times for the same type of weather risk?”

UPDATE
Near real time · poll ≥30 sec
COVERAGE
United States · active alerts
ACCESS
No login
LICENSE / TYPE
U.S. public domain unless otherwise marked by NWS
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Credit “NOAA / National Weather Service.”

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck alert timestamps, disclaimers, experimental products, and third-party material; do not imply endorsement.

Read license basis
JSON-LDCAPATOM
Official source
DS-003Climate & EarthLive data

NOAA / NDBC

NDBC Buoy Observations

Ocean buoy observations

Sea temperature, wave height, wind, pressure, and tide observations. Most stations report hourly; the latest summary refreshes about every five minutes.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“What does a buoy notice first as a storm crosses the sea?”

UPDATE
Summary about every 5 min
COVERAGE
Global stations · last 45 days
ACCESS
No login
LICENSE / TYPE
U.S. government public domain for NOAA-produced material; third-party exceptions
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Credit “NOAA National Data Buoy Center (NDBC).”

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck station metadata, quality flags, and any observations supplied by partner organizations.

Read license basis
TXTHTTPSNetCDF
Official source
DS-004Climate & EarthLive data

NASA / LANCE

NASA FIRMS Active Fire

Satellite active-fire detections

MODIS, VIIRS, and Landsat hotspots with brightness, confidence, and overpass time for tracking wildfire spread.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“How long is the gap between a fire seen by satellite and a fire reported by the news?”

UPDATE
As fast as under 60 min
COVERAGE
Global · 24 hours to 7 days
ACCESS
Free account / MAP_KEY
LICENSE / TYPE
NASA EOSDIS openly shared data; product-level guidance controls
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Name the satellite product and acknowledge NASA/GSFC, LANCE, ESDIS, and FIRMS with access date.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Open the selected product’s citation page before publishing; verify near-real-time status, version, and basemap rights.

Read license basis
CSVSHPKMLWMS
Official source
DS-005Society & Public LifeLive data

GDELT Project

GDELT 2.0

Global news event graph

Turns global news into events, places, people, themes, and emotional signals for stories about media narratives and shifting attention.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“How does the emotional framing of one event change across languages?”

UPDATE
Every 15 minutes
COVERAGE
Global · 65 live-translated languages
ACCESS
No-login downloads
LICENSE / TYPE
Unlimited use and redistribution under GDELT Terms of Use
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Citation to the GDELT Project and a link to https://www.gdeltproject.org/ are required.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck the Terms, dataset version, and codebook; do not treat source-news text as openly reusable GDELT data.

Read license basis
CSVBigQueryJSON API
Official source
DS-006Culture & KnowledgeLive data

Wikimedia

Wikimedia Analytics

Wikipedia attention signals

Page views, edits, devices, and top-page metrics that turn collective curiosity into comparable time series.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“After a major event, which term does the world look up first?”

UPDATE
Hourly / daily granularity
COVERAGE
300+ language projects
ACCESS
No login
LICENSE / TYPE
CC0 1.0 for Analytics API data
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Attribution is not legally required; citing “Wikimedia Analytics API” and query date is recommended.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck API terms, User-Agent identification, rate limits, and endpoint stability before publishing.

Read license basis
JSONREST API
Official source
DS-007Science & HealthLive data

Crossref

Crossref REST API

Global research metadata

Papers, journals, funders, institutions, licenses, and corrections for tracking research trends, retractions, and knowledge networks.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“How many years does a new concept take to move from paper titles into mainstream research?”

UPDATE
Continuously deposited
COVERAGE
Global DOI records
ACCESS
Public API · no registration
LICENSE / TYPE
Bibliographic metadata is generally factual / CC0; abstracts may be copyrighted
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Credit Crossref and use DOI links when referring to scholarly works.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Separately verify abstracts, full text, and publisher-supplied fields; follow API pacing and caching guidance.

Read license basis
JSONREST APIBulk
Official source
DS-008Cities & MobilityLive data

MobilityData

GBFS Public Feeds

Global shared-mobility status

Public real-time feeds for vehicles, stations, availability, service areas, and pricing rules, with no personal trip records.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“Can a city's daily tide be read from empty docks and available bikes?”

UPDATE
Refreshed by each operator
COVERAGE
1,000+ shared-mobility systems
ACCESS
Public feeds
LICENSE / TYPE
Operator-specific; check system_information.json
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Follow the selected feed’s license_url and operator attribution requirements.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Review each feed’s license, caching or polling terms, and operator policy; an open GBFS standard does not create one universal data license.

Read license basis
JSONGBFS 3.0
Official source
DS-009Population & DevelopmentHistorical data

World Bank

World Development Indicators

World development indicators

Long-run cross-country data on population, poverty, education, energy, trade, and the environment: a dependable foundation for data stories.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“Which countries expanded electricity or education before income began to rise?”

UPDATE
Annual / quarterly
COVERAGE
1960s–present · 200+ economies
ACCESS
No API key
LICENSE / TYPE
World Bank-produced open data defaults to CC BY 4.0; indicator exceptions may apply
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Credit the World Bank and dataset, include access date, and indicate translations or changes.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Check each indicator’s provider, license label, and additional terms; not every catalog dataset is CC BY.

Read license basis
JSONXMLCSV
Official source
DS-010Climate & EarthHistorical data

NASA GISS

NASA GISTEMP v4

Global surface temperature anomalies

Land–ocean temperature anomalies, gridded data, and uncertainty analysis for stories that move from the global trend to local differences.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“Warming is not one line: which places heated first, and where did change fluctuate most?”

UPDATE
Around the 10th each month
COVERAGE
1880–present · global grids
ACCESS
No-login downloads
LICENSE / TYPE
NASA open-science material; citation instructions on the GISTEMP page
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Cite both the GISTEMP v4 website with access date and the latest paper listed there.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck current Citation and Image Credits plus underlying GHCN, ERSST, and other source notes.

Read license basis
TXTNetCDFZarr
Official source
DS-011Climate & EarthHistorical data

NOAA / NCEI

NOAA Storm Events

U.S. severe-weather event archive

Tornado, hail, flood, heat, and other events with location, casualties, loss estimates, and narrative accounts.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“Are the economic losses from extreme weather rising faster than the number of events?”

UPDATE
Continuously supplemented
COVERAGE
1950–present · United States
ACCESS
No-login bulk download
LICENSE / TYPE
U.S. public domain for NOAA/NWS-produced material; third-party exceptions
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Credit “NOAA/NCEI Storm Events Database” with access date.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck the NWS disclaimer, methodology changes, loss-estimate limitations, and any third-party narratives.

Read license basis
CSVBulk Download
Official source
DS-012Cities & MobilityHistorical data

NYC Open Data

NYC Motor Vehicle Collisions

New York City road collisions

Every police-reported collision with time, location, casualties, vehicles, and possible factors, ready to join with street redesign and weather data.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“After a street is redesigned, do the locations and types of crashes actually change?”

UPDATE
Continuously updated
COVERAGE
2012–present · New York City
ACCESS
No-login download / light API
LICENSE / TYPE
NYC public data generally has no registration, license, or use restriction; dataset exceptions control
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Credit “NYC Open Data / NYPD Motor Vehicle Collisions.”

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck dataset metadata, portal Terms of Use, personal-data fields, and disclaimers before publishing.

Read license basis
CSVJSONGeoJSONKML
Official source
DS-013Culture & KnowledgeHistorical data

Google Books

Google Books Ngram

Five centuries of word popularity

Annual phrase frequencies from millions of books for tracing long-run changes in ideas, technology, emotion, and language.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“When an era begins talking about “anxiety,” which words disappear first?”

UPDATE
Versioned releases
COVERAGE
Approx. 1500–2019 · multilingual
ACCESS
Direct download · no login
LICENSE / TYPE
Ngram Viewer graphs and data may be used for any purpose
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Google asks users to acknowledge Google Books Ngram Viewer and link to it.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck the Ngram Info page, corpus version, OCR and language-detection limits, and query parameters.

Read license basis
TSVGZIPBigQuery
Official source
DS-014Science & HealthHistorical data

WHO

WHO Global Health Observatory

Global health observatory

Cross-country indicators for mortality, disease, health resources, vaccination, and risk factors, with dimensions and metadata.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“As life expectancy rises, does healthy life expectancy keep pace?”

UPDATE
As indicators are released
COVERAGE
Global · thousands of health indicators
ACCESS
No-login web / OData
LICENSE / TYPE
WHO Dataset Terms; not an unrestricted open license
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Credit WHO, dataset title, year, access date, and underlying countries identified by the dataset.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck public-health purpose, commercial-promotion limits, modification rules, third-party material, and current WHO terms.

Read license basis
ODataJSONCSV
Official source
DS-015Population & DevelopmentHistorical data

U.S. Census Bureau

U.S. Census Data APIs

U.S. population and community structure

ACS, census, migration, housing, business, and public-finance data reaching counties, census tracts, and block groups.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“How do commuting, renting, and household structure reshape a neighborhood together?”

UPDATE
Annual / decennial
COVERAGE
1942–present · varies by dataset
ACCESS
Public API
LICENSE / TYPE
U.S. government public domain for Census-produced material; third-party exceptions
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Name the U.S. Census Bureau, specific dataset or API, year, and access date.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Recheck the API dataset notes, geographic level, statistical disclosure limits, and third-party copyright marks.

Read license basis
JSONREST API
Official source
DS-016Population & DevelopmentHistorical data

Gapminder

Gapminder Systema Globalis

Story-ready global time series

Country-level time series assembled from dispersed sources, especially useful for comparative stories about health, income, population, and education.

STORY SPARK / QUESTION TO FOLLOW

“How many of our deepest intuitions about the world are already out of date?”

UPDATE
Independent by indicator
COVERAGE
Global · hundreds of curated indicators
ACCESS
No-login downloads
LICENSE / TYPE
Gapminder free material is CC BY 4.0; underlying sources may have separate terms
ATTRIBUTION / REQUIRED CREDIT

Use the official “FREE TO USE! CC-BY GAPMINDER.ORG” credit, or its modified-material wording.

PRE-PUBLISH CHECK

Check every indicator’s original-source link, license, and update note; do not use GAPMINDER as a product name.

Read license basis
CSVXLSXGitHub
Official source
FIELD METHOD

From data to story

Do not begin with a chart.
Begin with a change worth following.

01 / TRACE

Find the anomaly

Plot time before explaining it. Look for sudden turns, long divergence, and seasonality that should not be there.

02 / JOIN

Make the connection

Join events to place, policy, weather, or another timeline until correlation becomes an investigable question.

03 / LOCATE

Narrow the scale

Move from global to city, from annual to hourly. Stories often live in the local detail hidden by an average.

EDITOR'S NOTE

This is not a “best datasets” list.

It is a desk ready for work: sources are chosen for clear provenance, stable access, machine readability, and the ability to provoke an immediate question. Because endpoints and policies change, every entry keeps you close to the official source.

The first edition was verified on July 27, 2026. Before publishing, revisit the source for its license, attribution, sampling, and methodology notes.