Acknowledgments

The Southern Region Information Toolkit (SRIT) is an updated and expanded version of the Community Economic Toolbox (CET) which was developed as a project for communities and individuals by Dr. Amy K. Glasmeier for the website Poverty in America.

The CET was made possible by a grant provided by the Ford Foundation through the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and the Pennsylvania State University. Penn State provided material support for the development of the CET upon which SRIT is based. The major text used for the original toolkit was taken, with permission, from a series of papers written by Dr. Martin L. Shields entitled Using Employment Data to Better Understand Your Local Economy. Dr. Shields's project for the Mid-Atlantic states formed the basis for the CET. Without his applications the CET would have been far more difficult. Sherilee Carpenter provided assistance in all manner of operations for the CET. She served as editor, project manager and all-around project partner. Tom Bell of Stratamodel, Inc. developed the original databases without which the CET could not have been undertaken.

The expansion and refinement of data resources and text showcased in the SRIT were funded from a grant from the Southern Rural Development Center (in partnership with the Delta Data Center and the Mississippi State University Extension Service) as part of its work on the Delta Rural Revitalization Project. Team members involved in the preparation of the SRIT web-based site were Scott Woods and Bill Peterson of West Arete Computing and Bo Beaulieu of the Southern Rural Development Center.

Data Sources

Population, age, education, and labor force data were collected from the United States Census (1980-2000)

Industry employment data were collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Reconstructed NAICS-basis employment data (1990-2003).

In addition, a very large relational database is embedded in a mapping project, CensusMapper, that provides user access to data on any number of subjects from 1970-present. It can be accessed as a stand-alone project by contacting Amy Glasmeier.

Questions or Concerns?

Please feel free to contact the Southern Rural Development Center if you have any inquiries or if would like to offer any reactions to the Toolkit. Please note that new data will be added in the future that will further expand the value of the Southern Region Information Toolkit. So, we encourage you to keep visiting the Toolkit website to learn of new data or resources that may have been added.

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