Census Microdata: What, Why, and Where?
Channel: Help! I’m an Accidental Government Information Librarian Webinars
Date: 30/10/2020

Abstract: Heard of microdata but not sure what they are or when they might be useful?  This session will provide an overview to answer these questions and introduce a couple of freely available tools for getting them:  the Census Bureau’s new mdat tool within data.census.gov, and IPUMS USA, a tool from the Minnesota Population Center.  While the data may be of most interest to advanced researchers, librarians may want a general sense of what microdata are and what the tools can do.

Presenter bio: Michele Hayslett has been a data librarian for almost twenty years.  Having received much of her early training through the Census Bureau and North Carolina State Data Center, Census data is one of her specialties and she’s witnessed changes over three decennial Censuses now.  She works constantly with a variety of tools to pull data from numerous Census surveys in multiple formats.  She is a past president of NCLA’s Government Resources Section. 
Slides available: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vTDHTsw_mnXD8tmm8dXCmTQZ0BXH0JjFIFgl2AX665pRnEq8mjXvF793BXHQSLFUg/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000