Building an Archive of U.S. Census Related Data Products

Winter 1995 The consortium for International Earth Sciences Information Network (CIESIN), in conjunction with the Urban Information Center at the University of Missouri St. Louis has established a public archive of United States census data. The data are available via the Internet using FTP and/or a WWW browser. Currently the archive contains map boundary files for all common geographic units used in the census (including census blocks, block groups, tracts, counties, etc.) in a standard ascii (BNA) format. Data extracted from the 1990 decennial census Summary Tape File 3 (STF3) are provided in a format that makes it easy to link with the boundary files to create thematic maps with widely available GIS software such as Atlas*GIS, ArcView and MapInfo. These data files are organized by state and geographic level. Using the archive researchers should be able to readily retrieve files that will allow them to analyze and/or map data for areas as small as blocks or block groups. for anywhere in the U.S.. This paper discusses the content of the archive as well as describing some of the details of how and why it was constructed.