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About the project
The project is based on an original concept by Dawn E. Lacadie, who served as Library Assistant II in the Government Documents and Microforms Department at the Fogler Library from 1972 to 1995. Having noticed that many Census questions fell into a pattern, namely a request for a time series of Maine population figures for a single town or county, and given that the statistics were scattered through numerous volumes, Dawn began a three-year project to gather the numbers into one place, something we determined had never been done before. On the first pass through the data she recorded the figures on cards, then entered the data manually on special tabloid size spreadsheets. After the completion of this work, she and student assistant Gary Atwood carefully proofread all the data. In 1994 the finished spreadsheets, with accompanying notes and maps, were bound, and a limited number of copies were made and cataloged for staff and public use.
Carrying out the digitization phase
There was a desire to make this data more accessible, especially to remote users. The advent of the World Wide Web showed promise for fulfilling this goal. A project team was named in Spring, 2000 from the Library staff: Susan Robertson, and Frank Wihbey. That summer two student computer assistants, Randi Osgood and Amaranta "Amy" Ruiz-Nelson, were hired and carried out the data entry with a high degree of accuracy. Our contract programmer, Curtis Meadow, provided a computer comparator program which delivered an editing file consisting of the differences between the two data sets, which were then resolved by consulting Dawn Lacadie's original spreadsheets. The resulting raw data base was then checked for the presence of more than one cell with data for the same town for the same Census year. These cases were resolved by consulting the table of incorporation dates of Maine counties and distributing the data accordingly. Other steps were taken to assure that the various tiers of the data base fit together: county names, minor civil division names, subdivision names, population data, and historical/political data
The project team created Web pages to offer access to the site features, to interpret and explain the new service, to offer a user-friendly interface for entering Census data queries and viewing the results, and to integrate the Census project with other Library services and digital library products. Colored graphics for the pages were provided by Gary Guzzo of Atomic Studios.
The Maine Census Population figures are in a Microsoft Access database, operating under Windows NT, which is queried in the Structured Query Language (SQL) via scripts in VBScript and Javascript, in active server pages called by the five search pages. All queries are calculated "live" from the data base, and formatted as tables in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Programming was done by Curtis Meadow of Trefoil Corporation.
Characteristics of the database
Some overall characteristics:
- Non-empty data cells in the database for:
Counties: 256
Minor Civil Divisions (MCDs), i.e. Cities, Towns: 11,493
Wards and Census Designated Places (CDPs): 1,175 - Unique place names (even if there is data
for only one year):
530 MCDs exist for the 2000 data.
119 of the MCDs (past and present) have data for one or more subdivisions (wards, CDPs, etc.)
Other general characteristics:
Year
Minor
Civil
DivisionsWards or
Census
Designated
PlacesCounties 1790 150 1 5 1800 239 0 6 1810 291 0 8 1820 361 0 9 1830 455 0 10 1840 514 7 13 1850 464 8 13 1860 484 14 16 1870 591 67 16 1880 611 78 16 1890 610 131 16 1900 650 162 16 1910 693 158 16 1920 727 8 16 1930 662 10 16 1940 671 10 16 1950 678 123 16 1960 508 123 16 1970 532 94 16 1980 529 95 16 1990 525 87 16 2000
530 0 16
Summary of the historical notes attached to places (e.g. "annexed") in the database:
Relation
Quantity
annexed
15
annexed part of
63
changed name from
56
changed name to
65
part was annexed to
64
split off from
10
was annexed to
16
was incorporated as
23
What are your plans for future additions and upgrades?
- In the future we hope to add:
- a glossary of terms used in the Web site and specific to the Maine Census; a "How To" page explaining the use of the five search query methods in some detail; and a "Links" page for Web sites of related interest.
- new methods for downloading data; and an online comment form.
- search capabilities for the 1,176 cells of data already in the database for subdivisions of MCDs (e.g. Wards and Census Designated Places (CDPs)).
- total populations for the entire state for each Census year. (Note: there are issues to resolve of "which" totals. The Bureau of the Census provided retrospective corrections for some counties and minor civil divisions, so a significant amount of research will be necessary. Meanwhile users may add the county totals as given, and be assured that the difference, if any, from revised totals, would be a fraction of a per cent.)
When did you add the Census 2000 data to the database?
- The Census 2000 data for Maine counties and minor civil divisions was released by the U.S. Bureau of the Census in early April, 2001. We programmed a systematic way to add the new statistics to our data base.
As an alternative to using your query forms, can I download data from the database?
- The Census data is located in a Microsoft Access data base. We are considering some methods of querying that allow output as .dbf and/or .xls formatted files . Right now the best method is to copy the table that appears on your screen as a text file and paste it into a spreadsheet program.
Do you have maps representing Census data, such as population density by Maine county, etc.?
- We will link to any Maine maps that the Bureau of the Census creates for online retrieval and, based on demand, will probably construct a few ourselves, using ArcView software
Created by Frank Wihbey, Fogler
Library, The University of Maine. For further information
and to make suggestions, please contact:
Revised: 01/24/2008
© 2001-2008 Raymond H. Fogler Library, The University of Maine
