Working with U.S. Census Data

The U.S. Census of Population & Housing is a vast statistical resource for the study of American demographic, social, and economic change. Inherently geographic, since data is gathered based upon a person's place of residence, the Census of Population & Housing has been conducted every 10 years since 1790. There are many different sources and formats for the data; for a comparsion of the advantages and disadvantages consult the Census Source Table (pdf format).

Measuring America: The Decennial Census from 1790-2000 provides details of changes

to the census questionnaire, geographic areas reported, and data collection methods.

How to . . .

• Using WAGDA's Census geodatabases
• How to use WAGDA's 2000 and 1990 Census geodatabases to thematically map census data in ArcGIS.
• Get Census Data into ArcGIS (pdf)
  • Get census cartographic and attribute layers from ESRI's CensusWatch website.
• Introduction to GIS and Census Mapping
  • This step-by-step tutorial was created by Frank Donnelly, Geospatial Data Librarian at Baruch College (CUNY) to introduce GIS to new users using the thematic mapping of census data as an example in ArcGIS 9.2.
• Working with 2000 Census Data in ArcGIS (UTexas-Austin)
  • Gets cartographic layers from the Geography Network and attribute layers from American Factfinder
• 4 Easy Steps to 2000 Census Data on American FactFinder (pdf)
• Custom select and extract data tables from the decennial Census of Population & Housing.
• Finding Census Data
• Browse WAGDA for current and historical census data and layers
• Excel Tips
  • Import Data Into Excel (from text or pdf)
  • Concatenate Excel Columns (pdf)
• Access Tips
  • Import Data from Excel Into Access (pdf)
  • Import Shapefiles Into Access (pdf)
  • Concatenate Access Columns (pdf)