The state wide DataSheet archive and ESRI formatted shapefiles distributed will now be generated on a monthly basis. This is an automated process and negates the need for NGS staff to manually generate these files.  

The FTP site directory structure has also been simplified now that NGS no longer distributes information via CDROM based on region.  ESRI formatted shapefiles are placed in the ShapeFiles directory and state wide archival DataSheet files are placed in the DataSheets directory.

Please contact the NGS Webmaster at ngs.webmaster@noaa.gov if you encounter any problems with these files or if you have any comments to improve the process.

Background:
NGS has been providing various datasheet products for a number of years on its public FTP site.  Historically, before the web and ftp, NGS created CDROMs that were mailed to interested parties 4 times a year.  This same process was migrated to the Internet when NGS first established its presence on the Net.

The demand of CDROMs waned when the Internet became capable of sharing large amounts (megabytes) of data and our users could easily download our data any time they wished.  In addition, NGS customers have been requesting even more frequent updates from the NGSIDB than the standard quarterly updates of the past.

To address these issues, the state file generation process has been automated and will now be scheduled on a monthly basis.  Due to computer backups and other limitations on computing resources, each state will be generated on different day of the month (for example, FL will generate on the 19th, while LA generates on the 13th).  The previous month's generated shapefile will be available in: ftp://ftp.ngs.noaa.gov/pub/DS_ARCHIVE/ShapeFiles/ARCHIVE/LAST_MONTH/
The previous month's generated datasheet file will be available in:
ftp://ftp.ngs.noaa.gov/pub/DS_ARCHIVE/ARCHIVE/LAST_MONTH/


Please notify the NGS webmaster (ngs.webmaster@noaa.gov) if you encounter any issues with the monthly generated files.