Webinars
- Accessing NHGIS Data in R - March 5, 2024
- An Overview of IPUMS NHGIS: Geographic U.S. Census Data from 1790 to the Present - May 19, 2022
- NHGIS Time Series Tables: Geographic Census Data Harmonized Across Time - November 20, 2019
- Intro to IPUMS NHGIS: Geographic U.S. Census Data from 1790 to the Present - November 9, 2018
Video Tutorials
- NHGIS Data Finder (general overview)
- NHGIS Filter Options
- NHGIS Data Layout Options
- Join NHGIS Spatial and Census Data
Mapping Options
For Developers & R Users
- The
ipumsrpackage facilitates using IPUMS data, including NHGIS data, in R. - The IPUMS Developer Portal explains how to access the NHGIS API with examples for Python or R.
Print (PDF) Guides
This user's guide covers the entire process of selecting and downloading NHGIS data. It walks through two scenarios of differing complexity and shows how to use filters to find the tabular data and GIS boundary files of interest.
This page includes links to four NHGIS Data Training Exercises: two that walk through how to request NHGIS data tables and analyze them in Excel, and two that walk through how to access NHGIS data through R.
NHGIS only provides data files that cover the entire country (or files by state for census blocks or block groups). This tutorial guides users through the different methods of isolating specific locations in Esri ArcGIS so they can be mapped and analyzed independently even when data files cover a larger geographic extent.
Unfortunately, when adding a .csv file into Esri ArcGIS 8.x, 9.x or 10.0 through standard operations, the maximum number of columns that ArcGIS will import is 255, and any additional fields are truncated. Given that NHGIS data requests frequently exceed this limit, many users need to be able to get around this issue. Two work-arounds are discussed in this document. (Esri ArcGIS 10.1 has rectified this issue, allowing more than 255 column .csv files to open correctly.)