Here's a reminder that we all have to be constantly diligent to make sure govt information continues to be freely available for the long term!

Australian Census Data Released Under CC License, But Official Site Tries To Make It Hard To Download

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released the latest census data for free under a Creative Commons license but appears to be steering people towards a $250 mailed out DVD rather than making it easy to download the information directly over the internet.

Programmer and freelance journalist Grahame Bowland who first noticed it, said the government agency is going to great lengths to discourage people from downloading the files directly by dint of a convoluted site layout and Javascript functions that obfuscate file paths.

Census Bureau to Offer American Community Survey Internet Response, press release (MONDAY, DEC. 17, 2012)

The American Community Survey, the most detailed portrait of America's towns and neighborhoods, is now more convenient for most participants with the added availability of responding online. That will make it the 61st U.S. Census Bureau survey with Internet response...

Households selected to participate in the American Community Survey will receive a letter in the mail with instructions about how to log in to the secure website and complete the survey online... If households selected to participate in the survey do not use the online response option, the Census Bureau will send them a paper questionnaire, or contact them by phone or in person to obtain answers.

See also:

• Developing an Internet Response Mode for the American Community Survey, by Mary C. Davis, Jennifer Guarino Tancreto, and Mary Frances Zelenak, Decennial Statistical Studies Division U.S. Census Bureau, FedCASIC (March 23, 2011).
• Design of the American Community Survey Internet?Instrument: Final Report, by Jennifer Guarino Tancreto, Mary Davis, Mary Frances Zelenak. American Community Survey Research and Evaluation Program (April 18, 2012)

The Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) has a report on the House bill that would cut NSF funding for political science and eliminate the American Community Survey:

• House Passes CJS Spending Bill: Amendments Eliminate NSF Political Science Program and American Community Survey, Washington Update Volume 31, Issue 9, COSSA (May 14, 2012).

Here is an interesting set of census data, digitized from print. The dataset documentation (The 1967 Census Of The West Bank And Gaza Strip: A Digitized Version Dataset Documentation, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, Joel Perlmann, Project Director, November 2011) also presents a detailed description of the methods used to create accurate, usable, digital statistical tables from print.

• The 1967 Census of the West Bank and Gaza Strip: A Digitized Version, Levy Economics Institute of Bard College.

  In the summer of 1967, just after the Six-Day War brought the West Bank and Gaza Strip under Israeli control, the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) supervised a census in these territories. The census included an impressive array of questions about individuals, households, and the quality of residences—about age, sex, religion, place of residence, educational attainment, occupation, industrial sector, income, household structure, health, female fertility, and housing conditions. Moreover, it asked two crucial questions about refugee status: Had the individual lived prior to the 1948 War in the area that became the State of Israel? And, Was the individual living in or outside of a refugee camp at the time the census was taken?

  The ICBS prepared seven volumes of reports based on this enumeration—the first modern census reports on the Palestinian population. Yet these volumes have not been used extensively in the writing on the evolution of the occupied territories. One reason is that they are not widely available, and even when at hand they are subject to all the limitations of older volumes published as quickly as possible in order to be of use at the time.

  For this reason, the Levy Economics Institute is offering, for the first time and free of charge, the content of six of these volumes (the seventh to be added shortly) in machine-readable form, in the hope that the data can be exploited by researchers interested in a fuller understanding of the social history of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories. Bard student volunteers contributed appreciably to this project.

Just a reminder to all my docs librarian peeps: The American FactFinder's old interface (which many think is easier to use than their new interface!) is going away and American FactFinder2 will be the default interface to access data and statistics from the US Census Bureau. I hope FactFinder2 will make links to the 1990 census and older data sets (see the list below) VERY transparent. It's a real shame that those older data sets won't be accessible via the new search interface but only via FTP.

The Census Bureau will be ending the legacy version of American FactFinder on January 20. Any deep links into the discontinued system will no longer work, including links to:

• 1990 Census
• 2000-2004 American Community Survey
• 2000-2001 Supplementary Survey
• 1997 Economic Census
• 2003 Annual Survey of Manufactures
• 2003 Nonemployer Statistics

These products will only be available through an archived FTP format. All other current and previous year data from the American Community Survey, Puerto Rico Community Survey, Annual Population Estimates, Economic Census, and Annual Economic Surveys are available in the new American FactFinder. Access the how-to guide for Building Deep Links into the New American Factfinder to learn how to create links.

Via INFOdocket:

The 2012 files are now available at: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/

Direct to 2012 Edition PDF Files: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012edition.html

Direct to Earlier Versions: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/past_years.html

See Also: A Roundup of Press Reports/Opinion Pieces About the Possible Elimination of the Stat Abstract (via Water Librarians Blog)

Info about what's coming from the Census was announced at an "operational press briefing" that took place yesterday.

Robert M. Groves, director, U.S. Census Bureau and Stanley J. Rolark spoke at the event.

Presentation Slides (PDF)

A replay of the press briefing should be available soon on this web page.

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today the public release schedule for the official income, poverty and health insurance estimates for 2010 from the Current Population Survey (CPS), as well as estimates from the American Community Survey (ACS).

Intro and Timetable

Additional Materials Distributed at Event
* Materials Distributed at News Conference
* Count Question Resolution brochure [PDF]
* 2010 CQR Challenges

* Press kits:
- 2010 Census Briefs
- Summary File 1

* American FactFinder Brochure [PDF]
* U.S. Census Bureau at a Glance [PDF]
* Measuring America Timeline [PDF]
* 2010 Data Products Release Timeline
* 2010 Census Data Product Descriptions

Hello From DC (I mean Shakeytown, it Was My First Quake) Everyone.

As we prepare for our next event around hear and elsewhere along the east coast I thought it might be a good time to share a mountain of news, new resources, and other goodies with all of you.

The material comes from posts Shirl Kennedy and I made to our INFOdocket.com site. This is just a small amount of what we post seven days a week. Plus, we also provide FullTextReports.com. New reports are listed in the left rail (Thanks Jim and James)

We both hope you find and item or two of interest in the following update. More very soon. (-:

1. Hurricane Irene: FEMA’s National Situation Daily Update Available Online & Natl. Hurricane Center Mobile Resources

2. New Web Site: Feds Launch Performance.gov, Now Publicly Accessible

3. Acquisitions: Bloomberg is Buying BNA for $990 Million

4. US Department of Labor Improves Enforcement Databases Including Visualization/Animation Tools

5.U.S. History: “Rare Footage Unearthed Online”

6. New From the Internet Archive: “Understanding 9/11: A Television News Archive”

7.“Google Forfeits $500 Million Generated by Online Ads & Prescription Drug Sales by Canadian Online Pharmacies”
The full text of the statement from the USDOJ and FDA

8. Washington Post Op/Ed: “Don’t Kill America’s Databook” (U.S. Census Statistical Abstract)

9. NLRB — Acting General Counsel Releases Report on Social Media Cases

10. Back to School 2011-2012: Facts About Schools, Students and Teachers From the U.S. Census

11. 1940 U.S. Census to be Free on Ancestry.com

12. Government Information: GPO Releases API For FederalRegister.gov (Formal Announcement)

13. Teen Dating Violence: A Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography
From the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress

14. Update: More Digitized Historic U.S. Government Economic and Banking Documents and Reports via FRASER

15. A Look at a Few Resources Using U.S. Department of Agriculture Open Data

16. Cook County, IL: New online database lets anyone see who has outstanding warrants

17. Federal Agencies Take Action to Digitally Document Nearly 50 Endangered Languages

The 10 most segregated urban areas in America, By Daniel Denvir, Salon (Mar 29, 2011). "Slide show: The new census numbers provide a sobering reminder of how separate white and black America still are."

Decades after the end of Jim Crow, and three years after the election of America's first black president, the United States remains a profoundly segregated country.

That reality has been reinforced by the release of Census Bureau data last week that shows black and white Americans still tend to live in their own neighborhoods, often far apart from each other. Segregation itself, the decennial census report indicates, is only decreasing slowly, although the dividing lines are shifting as middle-income blacks, Latinos and Asians move to once all-white suburbs -- whereupon whites often move away, turning older suburbs into new, if less distressed, ghettos.

Happy birthday United State Census! It was on this day in 1790(!) that the counting of the first US census was begun. Title 13 of the US Code defines the census and the collection and publication of the census and other statistics required to make the federal govt run. So happy birthday census! You don't look a day over 200 :-)

The first enumeration began on Monday, August 2,1790, little more than a year after the inauguration of President Washington and shortly before the second session of the first Congress ended. The Congress assigned responsibility for the 1790 census to the marshals of the U.S. judicial districts under an act that, with minor modifications and extensions, governed census-taking through 1840. The law required that every household be visited and that completed census schedules be posted in ‘‘two of the most public places within [each jurisdiction], there to remain for the inspection of all concerned...’’ and that‘ ‘the aggregate amount of each description of persons’’ for every district be transmitted to the President. The six inquiries in 1790 called for the name of the head of the family and the number of persons in each household of the following descriptions: Free White males of 16 years and upward (to assess the country’s industrial and military potential), free White males under 16 years, free White females, all other free persons (by sex and color), and slaves.