Documentation for the digital sources of NHGIS tabular data:
- Historical Censuses (1790-1960)
- Modern Censuses: Core Summary Files (1970-2010)
- Modern Censuses: Special & Supplemental Reports (1980-1990)
- County Business Patterns (1970-2003)
- American Community Survey (2009-2014)
Time series tables link together comparable statistics from multiple censuses. The documentation describes how time series are constructed; summarizes which topics, years, and areas are covered; and provides a listing of all table sources and notes.
The GIS boundary files are based on the US Census Bureau TIGER/Line files with additional editing and digitization to produce historical boundaries in accordance with several map sources.
Two types of releases are documented: updates to the NHGIS website and updates to the NHGIS data (tabular or boundary data).