Data in the DREAM Lab and on Disk 

We provide access to a number of the UCSB Library's data collections, including many terabytes of geospatial, demographic, statistical, and others types of datasets that can be accessed onsite. We also mediate access to data on CD and DVD. Most of these datasets are in Library Search, but finding them can be difficult. Don't hesitate to ask for help! If you cannot physically visit the Collaboratory, we are more than happy to provide access to our in-house data. Please email us a dreamlab@library.ucsb.edu for inquiries to our data collections.

Online Quantitative Data

Sources of quantitative and numeric data include public databases, subscription sources, and limited access tools and subscriptions. Consultations are available to help identify and recommend data for teaching, learning, and research use. 

  • Government data sources (including Census data)
  • ICPSR
  • Datastream (Collaboratory access only)

Social Media Data

We support researchers who want to explore working with social media data sources such as Twitter. We offer access, consultation, and instruction for a number of tools and products.

  • Twitter Public API using twarc (realtime and 7-10 days capture of large datasets)
  • Brandwatch (historic Tweets back to 2008)
  • NCapture (7-10 day capture of small datasets)

Textual Data

A team of librarians has created a guide to Text Data Mining resources and methods available at UCSB and beyond.

Geospatial Data

The bulk of data in the DREAM Lab is offline, and described by "Data in the DREAM Lab and on Disk" above. We also maintain online collections:

UCSB Affiliates have access to all Esri desktop software via the Esri UCSB Site License