To learn more about the census in general, we recommend the Census 2000 Gateway: http://www.census.gov/main/www/cen2000.html. This page, by the U.S. Census Bureau is a wonderful starting point to learn about the census process and their map products. The Gateway provides everything from lesson plans on census topics to up-to-the-minute errata on the 2000 Census. It includes links to historical data and also to Census 2000 data layers and their explanations.

Map data:

To download census map data for an area, these choices stand out.

• The Census Bureau site has very informative map products. This data is PDF format, not GIS format. It is available at: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/maps/
• The Census Bureau has some GIS data available to download at: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/bdy_files.html
• To get Shapefile format data, which works in many GIS products including the FREE GIS data viewer called ArcExplorer, we suggest the Geography Network. While much commercial data on the Geography Network is pay-as-you-go, the census data is free, and is already processed for you. This data is GIS format (shapefiles), not PDF format. It is therefore not viewable in a Web browser - you must use a GIS program to see it. (Like the free viewers ArcExplorer from ESRI or MapSheets Xpress from Erdas.) Geography Network Census Data is available at: http://www.esri.com/data/download/census2000_tigerline/index.html
• To download TIGER line files (ascii GIS files), go to http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/tiger2k/tgr2000.html

• To get census data using a street address, click here
• To get "State & County QuickFacts" about any state, visit http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html