Tampa Bay demographics

Dear Colleagues:

I rarely pass around copies of our special collections finding aids because they often target “my usual suspects” (history, Am studies, and Fla studies). However, I have a collection that may be of broader interest to students in business administration or business management. In the old library, we used to maintain a vertical file of market surveys and research conducted by the St. Petersburg Times. These reports were kept in large red binders and were very clunky but useful.

We have kept some of the most important marketing research materials from these surveys as a distinct (and compact) collection in my area. Here’s a brief description:

The various reports and profiles residing in this collection offer an excellent account of commercial, demographic, media-related, and transportation trends in the Tampa Bay region. Some data sets examined individual municipalities or counties, while other sets included information about Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSAs) or Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) of Florida.

Materials in this collection include summaries of surveys, charts, and statistical information about residents and visitors to the Suncoast. Items reside in folders arranged into seven broad subject series: Business/Retail, Demographics, Economics/Finance, Media, Real Estate, Transportation, and Travel. The bulk of the collection covers the period from 1978 through 1997, though a few items include quantitative information from earlier years (from 1960 forward).

So, the next time a student needs to develop datasets for topics such as Pari-mutuel wagering trends, household growth in Florida, or television channels usually watched in western Pasco County in the late 1980s that may not be found in other sources (Florida Statistical Abstract, census), please send them my way!

JIM