VirtualRDC News @ Cornell

We have posted an archive of the TIGER/Line 2006 Second Edition files at http://www.vrdc.cornell.edu/tiger/. These are public-use data files as published by the U.S. Census Bureau’s geography division. These files are provided as a convenience for the community, since they were used in the creation of geographic definitions for public-use files available on this site

• QWIPU
• OnTheMap

The files archived here stem from http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tiger2006se/tgr2006se.html. While the files are still available as of Nov 2008, the copy on this site ensures that they will remain should the download site at Census remove them. For a more complete archive, consult TIGER/Line Files @ ICPSR.

We have activated a feature that allows for mobile devices (iPhone, Symbian phones, Windows Mobile devices, Opera Mini) to view a mobile-optimized site. Greatly enhances viewability while on the go.

OnTheMap v3.0 data files provided by the LEHD Program at the U.S. Census Bureau are now available for download to registered users. To register for access to the data, please request a login for the site by sending an email to virtualrdc@cornell.edu. Registered users can go directly to the download site. [More »]

Local compute nodes and web servers are being rebooted in order to apply security patches. Individual nodes may be offline for 5-10 minutes each. [More »]

The compute nodes and the web servers will be briefly offline Friday night to apply security patches.

CES has announced the availability of 1970 and 1980 100-percent and sample (long-form) decennial census files in the Census RDC network, as well as an identically structured version of the 1990 decennial census, facilitating research using multiple years of census data. Contact the RDC administrator at one of the Census Research Data Centers or Dr. Todd Gardner of the CES Data Staff for more details. The Census Bureau has provided the VirtualRDC with zero obs (dummy) dataset files for 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000, “zero obs” (see data page for details). Zero obs files replicate the structure of the data on the RDC servers, but contain no actual data. Because zero obs files contain variable names, locations, and length, and variable labels, researchers interested in submitting proposals can see whether the variables of interest to them are on the RDC files, and can begin writing code before they travel to the RDC. Documentation for these new files has been created by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) created additional documentation for 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000. This documentation can be accessed directly through the ICPSR web site, <http://www.icpsr.umich.edu>. It will also be available through the Decennial Census Long Form Sample section of the Research Data page of the CES Web site.

The most recent QWIPU data for all participating LED states have been uploaded (data for Texas was already previously released). The release R2008Q3 covers data through 2007:4. Registered users can download the data immediately. New users wishing to access the data can request a login for the site by sending an email to virtualrdc@cornell.edu.

2008 Census Research Data Center Annual Conference

• Keynote Presentation Speaker : Nobel Economist, James Heckman (topic TBD)

The Triangle RDC, in behalf of the Census Research Data Center Program, welcomes proposals to present papers and posters based on current or recent projects carried out in a Research Data Center or using confidential Census Bureau data. Graduate students are encouraged to apply. The 2008 Research Data Center Conference will be held October 13, 2008 at Duke University and is hosted by the Triangle RDC. Registration is free (with lunch included), but is required to attend. Deadline for proposals was August 1, 2008.

The complete OnTheMap OD matrix is available to users of the VirtualRDC compute nodes. Note that it is NOT available to users outside of the Cornell University’s Ithaca campus network. [More »]

There will be a short downtime during the course of October 1, 2008, for security patches to ia64 nodes. Sorry for the late notice.