U.S. Census Data at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Nationwide data from the 1970, 1980, and 1990 U.S. Censuses were previously available at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). The LBNL data archive is believed to be the second largest collection of socio-economic data in the U.S.; the largest is the InterUniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, (ICPSR), at the University of Michigan.

The LBNL resources described below represent about 100 person-years of development effort. Most of the resources are preserved in the form of data, software, and machine-readable documentation.

As of 1998, the machine-readable data are:
(a) about 50 GB on disk in an internal VAX computer at the Bureau of the Census
(b) about 20 GB on 9-track tapes stored at UC DATA, University of California
(c) about 200 GB on 9-track and 7-track tapes stored at Nor-Cal, San Leandro, California.

The associated SEEDIS paper documentation, about 250 shelf-feet in about 50 notebooks, is with Deane Merrill in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.

The Census Bureau provided interim funding to LBNL in order to move LBNL's Census data resources to the Census Bureau. The following tasks were accomplished in early 1997:
  1. install SEEDIS, with 10 GB of installed data, on a VAX at the Census Bureau
  2. copy files from Mass Storage System (about 50 GB) to the VAX at the Census Bureau
  3. ship archival tapes to Nor-Cal and UC DATA
  4. create a prototype CD with 1980 county and state level STF3 data
back to Deane Merrill's home page
back to Census Bureau: Other Sites with Census Data
back to GeoWeb: Internet Geospatial Data
back to CIESIN: Demography Home Page
http://merrill.olm.net/mdocs/LBL_census.html 4/23/98
dwmerrill@lbl.gov