Documentation for the ASCII Format of PLDF2

The ASCII formated file, pldf2.txt, is 79.5 megabytes and has 128,467 lines--one for each observation. It is in order by year then state then FSCSKEY. This file uses the same format as the PLDF ASCII data for 2001 through column 572. At that point, the 2001 data have imputation flags which are not necessary with the PLDF2 data as the imputations have (it is hoped) been removed. From column 573+, there are six variables: state, year, which were created as a part of the process of this compilation of this dataset, and four variables that are no longer collected but are included in this compilation: OTHSERV which was reported only for the years 1987-1991, FILM (1987-1991), PSUNDUP (1987-1989), and SVCINUSE (1987-1989). They did not appear in the 2001 data and space was not allocated for them.

The 2001 data are available from the National Center for Education Statisics on their Web site where the documentation is also available. The reason the ASCII file is so large is that it is written with a good bit of empty space. For instance, MASTER, (ALA-MLS Librarians) has 9 spaces in this format, enough for 999,999,999 librarians.

The file was created with a SAS program and the format of this file is:

August 14, 2003