The Public Data Access System (PDAS) is a pilot project to develop an online data extraction and display system for public access data. The pilot project uses Minnesota and limited US level data from the 1990 Census Summary Tape File 4 (STF 4). This information includes population, economic, educational and housing data for 49 racial and ethnic groups and covering standard Census geographies. The information provides detail not found in the commonly available data from the 1990 Census and has not been mounted on the web by other institutions. This file is of particular interest to researchers who need to analyze the condition of specific racial groups in small geographic areas. It has satisfied numerous requests for data from the MRDC and we anticipate wider use when web access is provided.

The project will result in an innovative web tool for accessing large sets of aggregate data. The successful completion of this project would put the Libraries in a position to expand the amount of on-line data available to researchers, and would position the Libraries to provide specialized data from the 2000 Census.

This project (PDAS) is a University of Minnesota Digital Libraries Project funded by the Minnesota Legislature. The project will provide digital access to important Minnesota and US census data through innovative web tools. We will produce a software system, which we name GRETA.