-------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: Sources for historic business address data for geocoding Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:37:26 +0000 From: Francis Donnelly <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Thanks to everyone for these suggestions - it looks like the options are to shell out big bucks or do it the old fashioned way. Some have suggested the D & B Million Dollar database - we used to have a subscription but dropped it when RefUSA came along; when we compared them for current businesses we found that RefUSA was more comprehensive; in several comparisons for different areas and different business categories it always had more records overall, and seemed better at dropping places that had closed. But the D&B has been around longer and used to publish older print directories - which we still have copies of (somewhere). Best - Frank -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frank Donnelly | Geospatial Data Librarian | Baruch College CUNY [log in to unmask] | 646-312-1657 http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis | http://gothos.info -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: Maps, Air Photo, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Angie Cope, American Geographical Society Library, UW Milwaukee Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 10:28 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Sources for historic business address data for geocoding -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Sources for historic business address data for geocoding Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:26:54 +0000 From: Henley, Amanda Clarke <[log in to unmask]> To: Maps, Air Photo, GIS Forum - Map Librarianship <[log in to unmask]> Dear Frank, The National Establishment Time-Series database (NETS), produced by Walls & Associates provides this kind of information going back to 1989. We have it for North Carolina only. It goes back a little farther than ReferenceUSA (1989). It is not inexpensive. For more info, see: http://youreconomy.org/pages/walls.lasso You can read more about it from our catalog record as well: http://search.lib.unc.edu/search?R=UNCb6629742 I hope this helps. Amanda Henley GIS Librarian and Subject Librarian for Geography Davis Library Research & Instructional Services University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Sources for historic business address data for geocoding? Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2013 19:40:25 +0000 From: Francis Donnelly <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> Hello List, I have a faculty member who is interested in building a dataset of names and addresses for particular categories of businesses for specific cities, so she can geocode and plot them to do some GIS analyses. The natural go-to source is Reference USA, since their data is already geocoded. The problem is - she needs historical data - 10 to 20 to 30 years in the past. She's contacted Reference USA and discovered that they are planning to offer a historical module, but it will only go back to 1997. They offered to create a custom-made extract for her, at a very high price. Can anyone recommend another source or product? In the "old" days, the way to do this was to sort through phone books / yellow pages, do some data entry to grab addresses for businesses under specific headings, and then address match / geocode. I'm wondering if anyone has created a project that digitized phone books from the recent past, or if there are some 1990s-era CD ROM products still floating around. Or - is this one of those things that has to be done the old fashioned way, extracting data from paper directories or microfiche? Thanks & Best - Frank -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Frank Donnelly* | Geospatial Data Librarian | Baruch College CUNY [log in to unmask] | 646-312-1657 http://guides.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/gis | http://gothos.info