Library Service from Numerical Data Bases: The 1970 Census as a Paradigm

This article discusses some of the problems of introducing machine readable data bases intp the library service environment. The authors, a social scientist at a computer center, and a government documents librarian, describe the diverse approaches used in making tapes of the 1970 Census of Population and Housing available to users through the library. LARGE RESEARCH LIBRARIES have tradi tionally been depositories for all of the maps and printed reports which are the products of each decennial census. Therefore it is a logical next step for them also to be the repository of these data in machine-readable form. First, this provides reference librarians with another resource for users whose needs are not satisfied by searching the printed materials, since the quantity of addi tional data which can be stored com pactly on magnetic tape has made it pos sible for the Bureau of the Census to make available to the public at least ten times the amount of data available from any previous census. Second, re search libraries are generally located at institutions which also have available large computers capable, of selecting, di gesting and analyzing these data and, if tapes are available, it becomes unneces sary for the user requiring a machine analysis to photocopy pages from re ports and then keypunch the data. Rath er, it becomes possible for a researcher to begin with the data already in rna