Most GIS programs have the ability to import these formats, but GIS programs are expensive. The publisher of ArcView and ArcInfo offers a free downloadable program called ArcExplorer for viewing and analyzing files with these formats. The chipmill.dbf file available below can be read by virtually all spreadsheet and database programs but this format provides limited support for spatial analysis and mapping. Each record in a coverage corresponds to one wood chip mill. The included location data represents information on 146 mills from the states of the U.S. that are part of the Southern Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service.
Errors can arise from different sources including errors in mailing addresses and in geocoding.
While we've tried to minimize our own procedural errors, there may be a few errors still remaining in some of the records, over and above the imprecisions inherent in geocoding in general and on accepting Post Office Box addresses in particular. ArcView shapefiles begin with several GIS-standard variables describing shape, perimeter, and internal record ID, but these are of limited use in this case. More generally useful are the remaining variables in the shapefiles, and the corresponding fields in the dBase table. The tabular data can be joined to any of the coverages using the mill-id. Indeed, the shapefiles were generated by joining the dBase file to the ArcInfo point coverage.