Qipudata
San Francisco · v0.7.1
qipu data›San Francisco›Documentation

Documentation

What the data is, how to get it, how to query it, and how far to trust it.

What the data is

The decisions of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors, 1906–2026, read from the printed Journal of Proceedings and the Board’s minutes, which libraries scanned and the Internet Archive holds; the city reports in Democracy’s Library; and the places, people and organisations they name. Every row links to the page it was read from.

Release v0.7.1, 21 October 2026: 539,192 decisions · 171,123 printed roll calls · 470,596 places · 183,888 cited pages.

Download it

Each of the 49 tables is one Parquet file; the whole release is also one SQLite file. Datasets and downloads →

You can also read a file straight from its address, without downloading it first, for example with DuckDB:

duckdb -c "SELECT count(DISTINCT coalesce(decision_group, decision_id)) FROM 'https://tiles.qipu.org/data/releases/v0.7.1/parquet/decisions.parquet' WHERE year = 1912"

Query it

The SQL console runs DuckDB in your browser on the published files. This counts the decisions per decade:

SELECT year // 10 * 10 AS decade, count(DISTINCT coalesce(decision_group, decision_id)) AS decisions FROM decisions WHERE city = 'sf' GROUP BY 1 ORDER BY 1

Run it in the SQL console →

Reference

  • Data dictionaryEvery table and every column, with what it means.
  • MethodologyHow a scanned page becomes a row, step by step.
  • AccuracyHow each field was made, and how well it has been measured.
  • LicenceThe facts are CC0 1.0: use them for anything. The scans keep their own rights.
  • Corrections and takedownHow to report an error or ask for a record to be withheld.
  • PrivacyNames of private people are withheld for 75 years.
  • IdentifiersStable ids, and the JSON document behind each one.
  • ChangelogWhat changed in each release.

Guides