Hi Liang, Actually, yes I did use the Summary File Retrieval Tool for Block Group Level ACS data; I've had fairly good luck with it, actually. I take your point about the GEOID number being not that intuitive but, to be fair, it DOES follow a coherent pattern. That means the end user can o some work stripping out the Block Group FIPS code to make it match up with the way it is usually recorded in other databases (e.g., in an ArcGIS map theme). It's actually pretty easy to do in Excel, just obnoxious. Given what I've learned from puttering around with the Summary File Retrieval Tool, I've put together a little side project for myself where I'm building a master indices at the Block Group and Tract level which contains the record indices for both the SF1 and ACS datasets (anyone who might be interested can see my earlier posts to this list). Right now, I've only completed Oregon (i.e., the state where I work), but my eventual goal would be to do it for every State/Territory in the union. The only real difficulties are that the amount and size of the transitional working files limits me to working on one state, and level of geography, at a time (i.e., I can't download all the Summary File Retrieval Tool spreadsheets for each state into a single Microsoft Access database, where I could write a master query to do the GEOID parsing). If anyone is interested in discussing this pet project/idea with me, I'd be happy to talk off list. I can send a demo of what I've built for Oregon, and if people are interested, perhaps we might crowdsource the project on this listserve? Just a thought. Let me know if anyone is interested. Mike Greenwald Michael J. Greenwald Senior Transportation Planner Lane Council of Governments 859 Willamette Street, Suite 500 Eugene, OR 97402 Tel:  541-682-6595 Fax:  541-682-4099 mgreenwald(a)lcog.org -----Original Message----- From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of liang.long(a)dot.gov Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 8:36 AM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: Re: [CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data Hi, Mike Thanks for sharing your experience with the Summary File Retrieval Tool. I assisted a user to use the retrieval tool to get ACS block group level data a while ago. However the GEOID in the output spreadsheets were all wrong. I complained this issue to the Census staff during the ACS program Federal users review and probably they have fixed this issue. But I never got the chance to test it. Did you use the tool for the Block Group level data? If so, how did it go? Liang Long ________________________________________ From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] on behalf of GREENWALD Michael J [MGREENWALD(a)lcog.org] Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 4:20 PM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: Re: [CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data Thanks to Liang for these links. I, too, have found FactFinder and DataFerrett to be less than intuitive. Building on Liang's message, in addition to ACS Alchemist, US Census also puts out a data retrieval tool that does a pretty good job of retrieving the 1, 3 and/or 5 year data sets. Look at the links for the Summary File Retrieval Tool under "Tools for Using the ACS Summary File" at the following link: http://www.census.gov/acs/www/data_documentation/summary_file/ The difference between something like ACS Alchemist or the Summary File Retrieval Tool is a matter of both task and personal preference. For example, some of my tasks involve dealing with both the ACS Estimate and the Margin of Error (two different data columns), so I like the fact that the Summary File Retrieval tool can be easily set up to consolidate both of those pieces of data. I also like the fact that the Summary File Retrieval Tool automatically loads the ACS table names and column definition in a Metadata tab, so you can easily turn to the documentation in the middle of your data assembly tasks. That said, it does take some extra steps to get the data into a nice, clean format that plugs into a GIS; ACS Alchemist may handle a lot of those tasks on the back end. So, it is a question of how one wants to access the data. I would be interested in hearing from others what experience they've had with the Summary File Retrieval Tool. Any thoughts? Mike Greenwald Michael J. Greenwald Senior Transportation Planner Lane Council of Governments 859 Willamette Street, Suite 500 Eugene, OR 97402 Tel: 541-682-6595 Fax: 541-682-4099 mgreenwald(a)lcog.org<mailto:mgreenwald(a)lcog.org> From: ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:ctpp-news-bounces(a)chrispy.net] On Behalf Of Liang Long Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 11:55 AM To: ctpp-news(a)chrispy.net Subject: [CTPP] An Alternative to Access ACS 5-year Block Group Data Hi, all If you are frustrated by getting the ACS 5-year block group level data via Census Bureau ftpsite or DataFerrett, ACS Alchemist may be a good alternative. I just tested ACS Achemist that was developed by Azavea & Temple University and I think it's easy to use. But keep in mind that only ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data are available in the ACS Alchemist. If you are looking for 1-year or 3-year data, you still need Census Bureau data access tools including American Fact finder and DataFerrett. ACS Achemist is an open source tool that enables the extraction of ACS 2005-2009 and ACS 2006-2010 data on different level of geographic aggregation, i.e., counties, county sub-division, tracts, blockgroups, etc. . The user interface is very straightforward and is a simple step-by-step process. The thing I like most is that output is saved as the shapefile and you can process your data in the GIS. The think I like least is that uses will have to create a variable file to define which data they want to get. The sample of a variable file can be find in the readme document which is included in the software installation package, but I attached one here for your convenience. Here is the link to the ACS Alchemist home page: http://www.azavea.com/news/archive/2012/7/31/azavea-and-temple-universitys-… Here is the link to download the software package: https://github.com/azavea/acs-alchemist/downloads Enjoy! Liang Long Cambridge Systematics, Inc. 4800 Hampden Lane Suite 800 Bethesda, MD 20814 tel 301 347 9141 fax 301 347 0101 FHWA 202-366-6971 e-mail llong(a)camsys.com<mailto:llong(a)camsys.com> www.camsys.com _______________________________________________ ctpp-news mailing list ctpp-news(a)ryoko.chrispy.net http://ryoko.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/ctpp-news