Recent Popularity of Census Data

On April 2nd, for the first time, the National Archives' US Census data was made available online.  Census data from prior years was released only in the form of microfilm and required a trip to the library to view the films.  Now, we are able to view and search this data from home or any Internet connection.  This convenient level of access has dramatically increased interest in the 3.8 million pages of data and resulted in the National Archive servers becoming overwhelmed with activity on the first day.

I visited the site today and was able to conduct a search without any difficulties.  It is fascinating to see the census data in the original handwritten form.  While I prefer a digital form to support quantitative analysis, this original data in its original form provides a glimpse into tools used to collect the data and an appreciation for the level of effort required to collect this data by hand.

It is exciting to see both the use of the Internet to publish public documents and the resulting increased level of interest in viewing these documents.