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ISO 3166-2 codes for the United States of America cover 50 states, 1 district, 6 outlying areas (including 9 minor outlying islands under separate ISO 3166-1 country code UM). The second part of the code is two-letter alphabetic, and (except for UM) is the same as the US postal abbreviation. The purpose of this family of standards is to establish a worldwide series of short abbreviations for places, for use on package labels, containers and such. Anywhere where a short alphanumeric code can serve to clearly indicate a location in a more convenient and less ambiguous form than the full place name. US readers may wish to consider them as the equivalent of worldwide zip or postal codes. Within the BambooWeb, the codes from the country pages link to the pages for the locations they identify.