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In February 1989 the Census Bureau released the first TIGER/Line files, called the Prototype TIGER/Line files. The TIGER/Line files provided the first seamless nationwide street centerline coverage of the United States, Puerto Rico, and the Island Areas and replaced the 1980 GBF/DIME Files (which covered roughly two percent of the land area of the United States). Over the past 17 years, based upon user requests for additional data content, the TIGER/Line files have grown from a file containing six record types to a file containing 19 record types. Record types also were added to accommodate the need for additional geographic entities or vintages of geography and record types were deleted as geography was removed from the TIGER/Line files.
With the modernization of the Master Address File (MAF) and Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (TIGER®) systems to use an Oracle relational database instead of our home-grown database, the Geography Division is thinking ahead to new spatial data products.
The Geography Division will make MAF/TIGER data available in shapefile format beginning in 2008. Please refer to the TIGER main page for more information. Please direct comments to tiger@census.gov
The Future of TIGER/Line®