The Political Boundary DLG attribute information includes multiple files. There is a DBF file (dBASE version III - 100bndry.dbf), a Word file (100bdupd.doc) both with attribute information concerning political boundaries. There are also two other DBF containing FIPS code information. These are in a separate file, fips.zip, and should also be downloaded.

The DBF file was derived from several text files, as was the Word; where information is duplicated in both files it will be identical. The Word file, however, contains more information than DBF file. This is due mostly to the nature of the data and a database. The DLG data when imported has major and minor codes, all classified as numerals. The text documentation had a mixture of text and numerals in the attribute code columns. This did not translate perfectly into a database format that could be used as a lookup table.

The original files documenting this data came from the U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS), as text files. There were two sets of files; the original documentation, and an updated version from 1995. The more recent documents are available on this site as well, in a zipped version. The files includes here are a combination of the new and old files. The DBF file contains ONLY the current (new) codes. The Word file contains the current data as well as notations on the older codes. BE AWARE that DLG data on the WWW may be new or old vintage, and may have old as well as new coding. With these two files you should be able to resolve conflicts over unclear codes.

In some cases the text description could be transformed into numerals; where this was fairly easy to do, such as the major code (feet, meters, etc) for hydrography, water surface elevation, numerals were inserted into the DBF file. In all other cases, a 999 (for major codes) or 9999 (for minor codes) has been inserted into the location in the file where the text values were. The original values have been moved to the BEGINNING of the description field, and placed in parens (). This was the case for the political boundary data, particularly for the minor codes.

For the Political Boundary data, the 100bndry.dbf file fields are labeled major3, minor3, and description. These are the fields in the DLG data where the actual attributes are found. There are also major1, minor1, major2, and minor2 fields in the DLG boundary data. The first two fields refer to the state FIPS code, the second to the county FIPS code. The DBF files with the appropriate labels for this data are in the fips.zip file. There are two files; fipsstat.dbf and fipscnty.dbf. Be aware that the county file is close to 2 MB when unzipped.

The assumption has been made with these files that if you are importing the DLG data into ArcView (and probably into Arc/Info as well, although that is yet to be tested) you will import the boundary information as a polygon file. The information displayed in the attribute files WILL be different if you import them differently. You may wish to perform different imports for display purposes but should import them as described above in order to use the DBF files as lookup tables for descriptions.