Statistical Abstracts of the United States (ref HA 202 U5 2009) Nerdy as this sounds, if the library were on fire, this is the book I'd grab on the way out! Fortunately, it is also online. The US government counts everything. If you are looking for the number of tons exported to Korea in 2007 (4.5 billion) or how many gas stations also sell cigarettes (92,000), this is the place to look.
California Statistics Abstracts. Same thing as US, except... California!
Time spent. According to the American Time Use Survey, people between 20 and 24 years old spend about 10 minutes a day reading. Ugh!
Consumer expenditures . Database and reports from the U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Social Explorer Social Explorer provides easy access to demographic information about the United States, from 1790 to present, all in maps! Very cool.
Field Research Corporation -The Field Poll* The Field (California) Poll has operated continuously since 1947 as an independent, non-partisan, media-sponsored public opinion news service and has issued over 2,300 different reports. During its long history, The Field Poll has acquired a national reputation as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of public opinion trends in California.
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research* Several thousand polls taken in the U.S. and some 70 foreign countries are housed in the Roper Center's library. They cover virtually all aspects of social sciences, ranging from civil liberties, crime, education, health, racial and ethnic minorities, to religion, women and women’s issues. Data is added constantly to the domestic and international collections of survey data. This is by far the most complete collection of public opinion information in existence.
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research Data Holdings (ICPSR)* The data provided by ICPSR are available to support research in the social sciences, including (but not limited to) economics and finance, population studies, sociology, health care, education, politics and governmental studies. Includes data sets provided by governmental and non-governmental agencies, as well as data sets from privately and publicly funded research, opinion polls and other studies.
*For information on how to download data from this archive, please go to http://www.ssric.org and click on the name of the archive in the upper left corner -- data from this archive can be accessed from any computer on campus (but not through the library's proxy server). If you have problems downloading the data set in which you are interested, please contact Dr. Edward Nelson, Department of Sociology (ednelson@csufresno.edu or 559-278-2275.