Wednesday, August 24, 2011

"Census, census, get'cher 1940 census here..."

...
I mentioned in Comments on the 1940 U.S. Census RFQ and SOW that the 1940 United States Census would be available to purchase from the National Archives on 2 April 2012.

The NARA E-Store has it for sale (see https://estore.archives.gov/SAMPLE_STATE.pdf) (two screens):



Yes, you too can have all 3.8 million digital images (almost 20 terabytes, that's 20,000 gigabytes) for the bargain price of 5.2 cents per image, or a grand total of $200,000.  Or you can order specific states for prices ranging from $3,000 to $9,000.  You do need to send a pre-payment of only $10,000 for the full 1940 census before 1 October 2011 if you want to guarantee. delivery on 2 April 2012.

It appears that whoever wins the NARA contract to host and provide access to the 1940 census images, for up to five years, will save $200,000.  However, that company has to follow all of the contract requirements, make reports and presentations to NARA, and manage the actual work of creating index links between the Enumeration District maps and the images, plus permit panning, zooming, printing and saving (up to whole ED sets).  For up to five years. 

Granted, a company that purchases the census images from NARA will have to create the index links to the images and then create the name indexes, but they don't have to manage and execute the contract requirements for up to five years.

So now we have an answer to one of my questions in my earlier post - how much will the 1940 census cost?  The NARA e-Store page doesn't differentiate between digital images and microfilm. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This post had me laughing so much! For some reason, the concept of buying the census for 200,000 is hilarious .

On a different note, are you implying that Ancestry.com isn't under contract with them. you ask who will win it.