Genealogists and researchers alike will be interested in the news that the 1940 Census was released on April 2, 2012. Because of privacy concerns, individual data gathered from a census cannot be released until 72 years have passed.
The 1940 Census can be accessed now from the National Archives and Ancestry (available at the CSU Libraries through GALILEO). To find a specific name, you need to know where the person was living in 1940. One way is to search old city directories. 1940 city directories for Columbus and Phenix City can be found in the CSU Archives. Another way to locate a person is by finding his or her Census Record from 1930 in Ancestry and converting the enumeration district to the 1940 Census, which works if the person did not move in the interim.
Because of the time spent on indexing, the Census is currently searchable by name in Ancestry for the states of Delaware and Nevada. The goal is to make it searchable in the near future for all fifty states.
Happy Discovery!