Guide to the 1997 Economic Census: Introduction

Guide to the
1997 Economic Census

PDF's, CD-ROM's, American FactFinder, and Drill-Down Tables

PDF's (portable document format files)

CD-ROM

All of the data in a form easy to manipulate.
Win95, 98 and NT users get powerful yet easy-to-use software that can answer simple questions or provide a complete economic profile for an area.
Users can select, reformat, and rank the numbers, and then export the data to a spreadsheet or other application for further manipulation.
The most comprehensive medium for 1997 Economic Census data (See comparison)
Data organized in 3 "volumes", two of which include multiple discs
Data from previous censuses are available on CD-ROM as well, although they use different access software.
More information about 1997 CD-ROMs

American FactFinder

Accessible via www.census.gov or factfinder.census.gov
"Database" format, with functions similar to the CD-ROMs, including export to ASCII and html formats.
Simple displays through Industry Quick Reports and Geography Quick Reports (See tutorial)
Customized queries through the "data sets" option (See tutorial)
Includes many, but not all, 1997 Economic Census data sets (See comparison)

Drill-down tables

Each electronic format can generate printed output at your own workstation.
Printed output from PDFs looks just like tables in printed reports.
Census Customer Services can print and bind any PDF report on demand, priced at $25 or more per report, depending on the number of pages. For a list, go to the Economic Census section of the Catalog: Publications.

Next topic