Friday, July 31, 2009

ICPSR wants YOU!

...To comment on their new website. You have until August 11 to explore the site and send comments and suggestions. Personally I'm very excited about the new search engine and the video tutorials! Woohoo, welcome to Web 2.0 ICPSR! It's fun here!

Friday, July 24, 2009

Printing of 2010 Census Questionnaires Under Way

Press release from US Census Bureau:
New 10-Question Survey Among Shortest Since First Census in 1790
The U.S. Census Bureau has begun printing 2010 Census questionnaires as the agency continues preparations for next year's count of the U.S. population. The new questionnaire, which every residential address will receive, is designed to be one of the shortest since the first census in 1790, asking just 10 questions and taking about 10 minutes to complete.

"Our goal is to count everyone living in the United States once, only once, and in the right place," said Census Bureau Director Robert M. Groves. "Making that happen begins with the 2010 Census questionnaire, a powerful tool that provides critical data that will guide representation in Congress and the distribution of more than $400 billion in federal funds to state, local and tribal governments every year."

Beginning in mid-March 2010, more than 120 million questionnaires will be delivered to U.S. residential addresses. To meet the goal, the Census Bureau will print more than 1.5 million documents every day.

See the full press release....

Friday, July 17, 2009

SimplyMap Quick Start Tutorial

Featured Database: SimplyMap

SimplyMap is a web-based mapping database for developing thematic maps–and tables—using thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables. Each user accesses SimplyMap through a "personal workspace". This quick start tutorial is an introduction to the layout of SimplyMap. I will be creating more on other tasks within SimplyMap. Stay tuned!

Access to SimplyMap is restricted to UNCG faculty, staff, and students.





Click on the bottom right of the video for full screen.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Viewing government data in google earth

Here's a great post from Jeanne Kramer-Smyth at Free Government Information (FGI)

"One great way to get your head around large government datasets to view it using Google Earth. I went on a hunt for the most interesting, striking and geography based government data sets currently available in the KML format used by Google Earth. There is a large gallery of tours and layers available from Google Earth's site, including some based on government data - but I wanted to look beyond them.... Check out more of the entry at Free Government Information (FGI)!