FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TUESDAY,FEBRUARY 6, 2001
Public Information Office CB01-22
301-457-3030/301-457-3670 (fax)
301-457-1037 (TDD)
e-mail: pio@census.gov
Leo Dougherty
301-457-1128
Census Bureau Breaks New Ground with Release
of DVD Products
The release on Digital Versatile Discs (DVDs) of two geographic
products, the fourth version of the TIGER/Census Tract Street
Index (CTSI 4) and the federal geographic data viewer called LandView,
makes the Census Bureau one of the first federal agencies to publish huge
amounts of digital data on DVD and signals a move by the agency to
supplement lower-capacity CD-ROMs.
The Census Bureau has a tradition of pioneering new technologies to
disseminate large public-use files. It used CD-ROMs to disseminate the
results of the 1990 Census of Population and Housing, as well as extracts
from its Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing
(TIGER) system, and it has been in the forefront of federal agencies
taking advantage of the Internet as a dissemination vehicle.
CTSI 4, used by banks and other financial institutions to meet statutory
reporting requirements for assigning property addresses on loan
applications to the 1990 census tract in which they are located, was
released on a single DVD last Nov. 27.
Released Nov. 14 on a single DVD rather than 13 CD-ROMs, LandView IV
contains both database management software and mapping software, as well
as Census Bureau digital map data, U.S. Geological Survey geographic
names, data on Environmental Protection Agency-regulated sites and 1990
census demographic and socioeconomic data.
The Census Bureau expects a substantial increase in the amount of Census
2000 data published on disc compared to 1990. All machine-readable files
will be published on disc. In 1990, only some files were available on
CD-ROM.
Even with its efforts to reduce file sizes by using compressed data
formats, the Census 2000 CD-ROM series could approach 1,000 individual
discs (about seven times the total published in 1990). To service
customers who want all states in a series (federal depository libraries,
census information centers, etc.), the Census Bureau will put each series
(Summary Files 1 through 4) on a much smaller number of DVDs, depending on
file sizes and formats, after individual state files have been issued on
recordable CD-ROMs.
DVD was developed by the optical disc industry as the next evolutionary
stage in compact disc technology. DVD-ROM uses the same basic technology
as DVD video discs, which contain entire feature-length movies.
Other Census Bureau geographic products planned for DVD include the
TIGER/Line files, beginning with the Redistricting Census 2000 TIGER/Line
Files.
available free from Adobe.
