Searching for a dataset

All of the previous guides have focused on searching for documents or entities in a variety of contexts in Aleph. But what if you’d like to know what datasets are even available?

The main search bar at the top of the Aleph site returns results for documents and entities, but not datasets. In order to search for a specific dataset, say, the UK Companies House or the Panama Papers, you must click the Datasets button.

You will then be brought to a list of all of the source datasets to which you have access in Aleph. At the top of this screen you will see a search bar which allows you to enter keywords to find specific datasets, as well as a result count, and buttons to sort the results.

Each dataset listing includes a brief description, a note of when it was last updated, the countries it pertains to, the count of how many document and entities it contains, and, in some cases, the frequency it is updated and how restricted its access is.

Clicking a dataset listing will bring you to that dataset’s homepage, allowing you to view more detailed metadata about the dataset, an overview of its contents and the ability to search within and cross-reference with other datasets.

Filtering the datasets list

In much the same way as the filters used when searching for entities and documents, the datasets list can be filtered either by Category or Country.

In this way you can search for all of the datasets pertaining to Panama, or all of the Company registers for a given country.

Now that you’ve learned all there is to know about searching pre-existing source data in Aleph, read further to learn about creating and uploading your own!