One of the most common statistical questions, across all types of
libraries, is the population question. How many people are in the
nearest town, city, county, or state? Fortunately, the United States
Census Bureau gathers and disseminates an amazing array of
statistical reports, estimates, and predictions of the U.S. population.
And now the Census Bureau is making some of their data available on
the net.
As gopher servers proliferated in cyberspace, localities began
putting local census statistics on their servers. Some sites provided
quite detailed population statistics for their state, often pulling
tables from CD-ROMs with reports from the 1990 Census of Population
and Housing. This lead to good coverage of recent population statistics
for some states, while other sections of the country had no substantial
Internet source for population statistics. The advent of the Census
Bureau on the Internet has changed that, providing full coverage of the
U.S. with a variety of statistical reports. The Bureau now offers a
range of Internet-accessible data sources, including a gopher server, a
World-Wide Web home page, telnet access to the Census Bureau BBS,
and an anonymous FTP site.
POPCLOCK
For an excellent example of the kind of instantaneous information
that the technologies of the Internet offer, try the Bureau's Population
Clock. The PopClock, as it is known, provides up-to-the-minute
estimates of the resident population of the United States. This is the
quintessential online information resource. The PopClock is available
through a Web browser at http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/popclock. It
can also be reached by gopher at the URL of gopher://gopher.census.
gov: 70/0exec0::/Bureau/Population/ gpopclock or through the
following menus at gopher.census.gov:
3. Enter the Main Data Bank/
13. Population/
To its credit, the Census Bureau provides more than just the
statistic. Directly below the number is a detailed explanation of who
is included in the statistic and how the projection is determined.
While the Bureau has made a great step forward into electronic
publishing with its Internet presence, it still has a long way to go
before it catches up to its print publications. By no means are even the
majority of the census reports and other statistics available on the
net.
For those who use the Internet frequently for ready reference
requests, knowing what is and what is not available for the Bureau on
the Net can save a lot of time and frustration. Of the multiple access
points to the Bureau, the gopher and Web interface are the most user-
friendly. However, the anonymous FTP space and the census BBS can
provide additional options for access.
FTP SITE
The Census Bureau's anonymous FTP site at ftp.census.gov contains
many of the files that are also available on its gopher server or
through its Web home page. In most cases, it is easier to find a
specific report or statistic through gopher or WWW. However,
knowledge of the FTP site can be useful as a backup if the gopher
server is down or if a citation only refers to the FTP location.
Once connected to the anonymous FTP server, change to the "pub"
directory. The data files are divided into more than 40 directories. The
first few listings include the following:
Census-BBS/
Govt-Stats/
International/
Press-Release/
Sipp-On-Call/
Stat-Briefs/
We-The-People/
agr/
agriculture/
ces/
construction/
crime/
.
.
.
Be warned that some directories and subdirectories are empty
while others contain megabytes of data. When a readme file is
available in a given directory, read that first to determine the kind of
data in the directory and the naming scheme. The actual filenames can
be rather cryptic (care to guess what's in hwts93.dat or c20-
9403.txt?) unless the readme file explains the scheme.
CENSUS BBS
The Census Bureau's electronic BBS can be reached by a telnet
connection to cenbbs.census.gov. As with most BBSs, the first visit to
this BBS entails a registration process. After answering all the
questions, the BBS menu will finally appear (Figure 1).
One of the advantages of the BBS is the message database. For those
looking to communicate directly with people at the Census Bureau and
those who want to stay up-to-date with Bureau announcements, the
Census BBS can be useful. But due to the time involved with the
registration process and the general sluggishness of running a BBS
over the Internet, the Census BBS takes the back seat when compared
with the ease of access to the data via gopher or a Web browser.
CENSUS GOPHER
Figure 2 shows the Census Bureau gopher server (gopher.census.gov)
using a WSGopher client. An examination of the top level menu (shown
in the upper left-hand corner) shows that most of the actual census
data will be found in the Enter the Main Data Bank option. The other
options either lead to information about the Census Bureau or to other
Internet resources.
The Main Data Bank section (lower left-hand corner of Figure 2)
provides access to the majority of the available statistical
publications. However, the names of some of the categories can be
deceiving. Do not expect to find the full text of comparable print
resources, at least at this point. Reference chestnuts like the
_Statistical Abstract of the United States_ or the _County and City
Data Book_ appear as gopher menu headings, but only a few tables from
each are included on the gopher.
For example, the menu heading Statistical Abstract of the United
States does not provide access to all the tables in the print or CD-ROM
_Statistical Abstract of the United States_. It only includes a series
of tables for state rankings. While these tables do include commonly
requested demographic information for each state, it is a far cry from
the wealth of information in the full _Statistical Abstract_.
Likewise, the County and City Data Book menu entry only includes
statistics for cities over 200,000. At least the menu is a bit more
descriptive in this case, qualifying the menu entry with Top 77 City
Rankings. Unfortunately, no county level information is provided.
Another seemingly promising but deceiving menu option is County
Business Patterns. Detailed statistics on the number of
establishments and payroll by SIC are available under this heading, but
again, only at the national and state levels, not the county level. The
data are available in both ASCII and comma-delimited formats, but all
as one big report. There are no entry points for particular states or
specific SIC numbers, as is common in other reports that the Census
Bureau makes available electronically. The whole report is provided
but no detailed access is available.
Like the PopClock, press releases benefit from the online advantage
of the Internet. They can be found under the News Releases Hot Off the
Press option. These press releases can be an excellent source for
recent statistics. In addition, they can provide contact information
that may expand on newspaper reports of the same data.
There are many useful statistics under the Main Data Bank menu
headings. But for those of us who depend on the print publications, the
limitations in coverage keep the gopher server from being a one-stop
statistical source.
On the other hand, one gopher offering demonstrates the future
potential of electronic publishing on the net. The menu for We the
People publications (under Main Data Bank/Documents and
Publications) presents PostScript versions of this print publication.
With a client capable of displaying PostScript files (either Xgopher or
WSgopher with Ghostview), the document can be displayed in fully-
formatted text with illustrations and tables directly on the monitor.
There are other categories worth investigating under the Main Data
Bank heading, but one other useful search category is actually found
under the About This Gopher Server top-level menu: the Keyword
Search on Our Entire Server option. Keyword search capabilities on a
local server (sometimes using the jughead software) are a very useful
feature of any gopher. On the Census gopher, this option can be used to
track down specific kinds of statistics. Unfortunately, the
implementation of the keyword search feature is not always effective.
For example, a keyword search on a state name does not retrieve all
(or even most) of the documents or menus with statistics for that
state. A comprehensive and dependable keyword search of the whole
Census gopher would be a worthwhile addition to the resource. In the
meantime, the Keyword Search on Our Entire Server is worth at least a
quick check.
WEB SERVER
At first glance, the World-Wide Web home page for the Census
(http:// www.census.gov/) appears to be only a slightly more
sophisticated front end to the gopher server (Figure 3). There is a
hypertext link to Main Data Bank, which looks quite similar to the
gopher Main Data Bank. News Hot Off the Press is available on the top
of the page, followed by the familiar PopClock. Not too far below
comes the heading Learn more about us, which has much of the same
information about the Census Bureau as is found on the gopher server.
A closer look at both the home page and the Main Data Bank link
shows that there are significant differences in content between the
WWW page and the gopher server. True to its multimedia capabilities,
the Web page offers audio and visual information in the form of
recordings of radio broadcasts and a trip through the Census Bureau art
gallery. (No, it is not a collection of Renoir or Monet, but some gifs of
census posters.)
However, it is the Main Data Bank option that leads the way to
significant collections of additional census data. Some of the gopher
categories, such as the statistical briefs, the bulletins, and the We the
People series, will be found under the Documents and Publications
option. The listing for Population connects to the same four resources:
a description, the PopClock, projections, and estimates. Papers from
the Center for Economic Studies are available from both interfaces.
Other sections of the Main Data Bank are specifically designed for
the Web. The Financial Data for State and Local Government and
Schools section is set up as HTML documents. Although there is a link
in the gopher server to this data, it requires a Web browser to view.
The GeoWEB listing also connects to the same three points, but only
the Web version offers a connection to the GeoWEB home page. One
resource only available on the Web home page is the Tips on Genealogy
section, which provides information and the beginnings of a FAQ for
people seeking genealogical information from the Census Bureau. Since
it is primarily ASCII textual information, it may well be a link from
the gopher server in the near future.
The most promising feature of the WWW Census information lies in
the Lookup program. One of my criticisms of the gopher server was the
lack of depth in the statistics available. Few reports covered any
geographic area smaller than a state; and nowhere did the gopher offer
detailed population figures, the statistic that first springs to mind at
mention of the Census Bureau. However, hundreds of CD-ROMs from the
1990 Census of Population and Housing have been released with user-
friendly software. The experimental Lookup program bridges the gap
between the Internet and CD-ROM resources in an impressive manner.
Lookup requires a WWW browser that supports forms, such as Lynx
2.3, or any of the current versions of Mosaic. It is available under the
Data Access Tools option, or directly at either of these URLs:
http://cedr.lbl.gov/cdrom/lookup or
http://bigsur.lbl.gov/cdrom/lookup
Data from the census summary tape files 1A, 3A, and 3C are
available. The Web forms feature is used to select the desired
variables, such as geographic area and demographic breakdowns. Once
all the criteria have been selected, Lookup offers the data in one of
three ways: HTML for direct browsing with a Web client, tab-delimited
format for use in a spreadsheet, and CODATA format.
According to its own files, the Census Bureau is "Factfinder for the
Nation" and "collects data about the people and economy of the United
States and produces a wide variety of statistical data products
including printed reports, statistical briefs, and computer files on
tape and CD-ROM media." With its multifaceted presence on the
Internet, the Census Bureau is becoming another major source for
trustworthy information in cyberspace. And if the Lookup project is
successful at providing an acceptable interface between its CD-ROM
products and the net, it may lead the way for an even greater expansion
of Internet-accessible statistics.
Communications to the author should be addressed to Greg R. Notess, Montana State University Libraries, Bozeman, MT 59717-0332; 406/994-6563; greg@notess.com ; http://www.notess.com.
Copyright © 1995, Online Inc. All rights reserved.