On Fri, 11 Feb 2000 08:10:08 -0500 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> I was speaking with the U.S.Postal Service (USPS) Historian, an apparently
> likely resource for "ancient" information such as 1980 zipcodes. She has had a
> tough time selling the idea of keeping old records, such as 1980 zipcodes, to
> her management. I said that the USPS could possibly sell this information, and
> the USPS costs would be minimal.
One potential problem is that Zip Codes aren't exactly polygon or
point objects to begin with, but a numerical code that the postal
service assigns to a street address, not to an inherently "real"
geographic location (like lat/long coordinates). Each building, or
street address, is given a code (or perhaps a range of 9-digit codes
if a large office building). In any case, it might be considered
artificial, although useful to many people, to create polygon files
from these code-address associations, and I don't think the USPS
would have files associating a code to lat/longs. They're more
likely to have files of address-to-code matches, and it would
definitely be useful to archive these. You'd have to use the address
info with TIGER and the like to create boundary or point files based
on codes.
You could use the 5-digit zip code directory (certain large libraries
would keep old ones, and hopefully the USPS archives these) to get
address-to-code or code-to-address associations. Maybe that's all the
USPS has, anyway, or maybe they have something more detailed, down to
single addresses.
Yes, knowledge of what the codes were at some time past would be
useful to many researchers.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Mark Thomas / Public Documents & Maps / Perkins Library
Duke University / Durham, NC 27708-0177
[EMAIL PROTECTED] / voice: 919-660-5853 / FAX: 919-684-2855
The train ...
traditional, yet environmentally sound. --Lisa Simpson
----------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put
"unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
