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Anyone know of any free sources of GIS shapefiles?

I'm looking particularly for a shapefile of Public and private universities in the US. I found on the the University North Carolina website buts it's only accessible to students and faculty. (Any of you out there?) Any source of free shape files, on anything, would be much appreciated.

Public Comments

1. While not in the USA you can download shapefiles of the entire Yukon territory here in Northern Canada, from our territorial government. Here are the links - (For all the pieces as one ftp) ftp://ftp.geomaticsyukon.ca/Imagery/Landsat7/landsat7_index/landsat7_index.zip (To select Individual images) http://www.geomaticsyukon.ca/imagery.html Enjoy!
2. There are many, many sources of free GIS data (including shapefiles). You will limit yourself if you only use shapefiles though- there are free programs that convert e00 and Tiger (US Census) files to shapefiles. Good source of mixed data, only some shapefiles, mostly .e00: http://data.geocomm.com/catalog/ Preview ESRI Data and download a limited amount of free layers: http://arcdata.esri.com/data_downloader/DataDownloader?part=10200 20+ sites listed: http://www.freegis.org/database/?cat=1&_ZopeId=07358409A2eFPn4jTd0 Finally, here is an example of what I found in two minutes of searching "free GIS shapefile," which is free shapefiles for Boulder County, CO: http://www.co.boulder.co.us/gis/downloads/dl_shapefiles.htm Just spend time searching for what you need. Follow up if you need further help.
3. I know that you can get census shapefiles from the state governments, and at least in Minnesota we have a state GIS Data Site where you can get free downloads in shp, e00 as well as some lesser used formats.