Update: The link to LMGTDFY is inactive.
Okay, we’re swinging back to data for a bit, but this is an easy one. (It might be a tool I share in a future conference session on “data hacks” – easy paths to data.) You ever asked something on the Internet and someone hit you with “Let me Google that for you”?
Allow me to introduce Let Me Get That Data For You. It’s also known as LMGTDFY, thought I’m not convinced that’s a helpful acronym.
It searches sites for Excel files, text files, even shapefiles (which are used to make maps). In other words, it finds data you might need.
There are a few downsides:
– you might need to let it run in another tab for a minute or two before it’ll find all the files
– you also need to read the URLs to see what the data is
– it doesn’t search sections of a website (e.g., “nola.gov/purchasing”)
And, the biggest caveat – though I would say this for anybody – is that LMGTDFY is *not* guaranteed to be a full list of all the data held by an agency. That’s really freaking difficult to do.
But it does do a hell of a job (it found more than 1,000 files on louisiana.gov).
One more thing: remember that intro to scraping I wrote about a couple weeks ago? If you’d like to see and hear me do it, rather than read me write about it, I recorded a couple videos here. Happy data hunting 🕵
