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<TITLE>The CIA World Factbook in shapefile form</TITLE>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Hi All,</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>I have completed a reasonable beta version of a political world map </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>that includes as attribute data fields information from the June 1, </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>2006 CIA World Factbook. It is a beta version since it appears that </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>some attribute field values that should be missing were coerced to </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>numeric zero values at some point in the process of creating the </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>data. When I get a chance, I'll fix this problem with a full release.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>A I started working on this layer to use in showing GIS concepts to </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>my 12 year old son. However, I quickly realized this would likely be </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>of interest to both the Public Geodata and Education committees at </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>OSGEO. Moreover, it seems like a good first contributed data </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>offering, complete with the issues of how to handle metadata and </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>licensing issues. The data are derived from the VMAP0 political </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>boundary layer (which Markus Neteler provided valuable support in </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>helping me to create). Parts of the VMAP0 political boundary layer </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>seem to be in the public domain, while other parts seem to be under </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>(a very liberal, non-commercial use) license from ESRI. In any event, </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>if you are interested, the url to get this layer is www.pagcgeo.org/ </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>world_factbk.zip.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Given the fairly high overlap between the Public Geodata and </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Education committee lists, I've decided to post this to the Public </FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=2>Geodata list.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2>Dan</FONT>
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