Online Tutorial: Community Analysis Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

This streaming video tutorial consists of a five- parts to provide a guide on:

• How to download U.S. Census data from American Factfinder
• How to do basic anaylsis of Census data in Excel
• How to convert Excel file into DBF file
• How to join Census data to cartographic boundary files using ArcGIS
• How to create a map and report a image in Word.

NOTE: it requires Flash Players browser plugin to view the tutorial.

To work this tutorial hands on, it also requires Internet Explorer, Excel, Access, GIS software (ArcView 9.0 above) and any of Winzip software.

This tutorial was a result of the collaborative project between the University's Teaching Across Curriculum (TAC), the department of Social Work at the George Mason University, and the Government Documents/Maps unit in the libraries to enhance undergraduate students to develop skills to use specialized electronic tools for research.

With a basic familiarity of how to identify and analyze Census data and understanding of visualization of Census data using GIS technology, students will be able to perform further similar analyses on their own by going through this video tutorial.

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