1. Find out the lowest level of geography desired and whether the patron wants lots of it, like all block groups in MN or all census tracts in Hennepin County or everything ever for California.
2. American FactFinder works best for large groups of these geographies WHEN YOU CHOOSE “geo within geo” on the “Select Geography” page.
a. Counties, County Subdivisions, Census Tracts and Places
3. The disks work best for large groups of all geographies, but if the patron’s on the phone and AFF will work for them, the disks are probably not the best choice.
4. FTP is for people who are adamant that they want everything that they can get and are comfortable with FTP and data handling. Always check the user’s reaction to the terminology – no matter how much they say they want it all, if they look lost at the mention of FTP, creating data files, using the documentation to interpret the files, they DON”T want this option.
5. American FactFinder now has a "save query" option - if a user says they want it all because they'll need to dip in and out of the data regularly, point out the save query feature. You would walk through the data selection process once, save the query and then, when you go back later, you can load the query and only change the table selections.
Posted by bgi at June 1, 2005 10:34 AM | Email This Entry