Research Resources
Powerful People and Connections
LittleSis - database of powerful people in business, government, nonprofits, etc. and their relationships
General Data Sources
OpenDataPhilly - City of Philadelphia datasets
Campaign Finance
Follow The Money - federal and state campaign finance data
Open Secrets - data and analysis on federal campaign finance and lobbying
Facebook Ad Library - search for ads that campaigns are running on Facebook
Election Results
Sixty-Six Wards Portal - Philly election results maps and tables, along with voter registration and turnout data, demographics data, and more
Corporations
OpenCorporates - database of registered companies
Mergent Intellect - collection of international private and public business data, industry news, and executive contact information (available for free with a Free Library card)
Nonprofits
ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer - view nonprofit and foundation tax filings for information like board members, executive compensation, financial information, and grants
City Council Legislation
Philadelphia Legistar - search for legislative bills
Legal System
District Attorney’s Office Public Data Dashboard - data on incidents, arrests, charges, case outcomes, bail, etc.
Contracts
Public Records Requests
Property Data and Housing Research
City of Philadelphia Property Atlas - ownership information, property values, tax information, etc.
Who Owns Philly? - find out who owns what in Philly, what else they might own in the city, and information about their properties
https://propertyowners.phl.party/ - search for properties by owner
Education
Data Analysis, Visualization and Mapping
QGIS - open source mapping software
R and Tidyverse data science libraries - open source statistical programming software
Gephi - network/graph visualization software
Fuzzy Lookup - helpful Excel add-in for cross-referencing data with alternate spellings
OpenRefine - data cleaning tool
Tabula - extract tabular data from PDFs
General Research
Free Library of Philadelphia Databases - includes archives of Philadelphia area newspapers and much more, available online with your Free Library card
Internet Archive Wayback Machine - see what webpages looked like at certain times in the past
Obsidian - note-taking software that’s good for creating links and networks between entities