E-Views and Reviews: Safety in Numbers

“ENCYCLOPEDIA-OFF”A researcher asked about “opml” so I searched Encyclopaedia Britannica Online and found nothing, but Wikipedia gave a full definition along with explication of the acronym (Outline Processor Markup Language) and links to XML format, Shortcomings of OPML, Validating OPML, and much more. Score so far: Britannica: 0; Wikipedia: 2.

HEADS UP on Bowker’s Book Analysis System (www.BowkersBookAnalysis.com), which teams Bowker with H.W. Wilson to create an assessment tool for school and public libraries that compares your collection to the Wilson Standard Catalogs and identifies its gaps and duplicates. If your library has the proverbial “incredibly shrinking budget,” take a look and let me know your thoughts.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK “The volume of information being digitized by web search companies and governments has changed the landscape in multiple ways for librarians and vendors.... The need for electronic journal management tools that help librarians spot bloat and redundancy in e-resources has increased dramatically.... As a community, we recognize the need to develop electronic archive solutions. In response to these trends, ProQuest seeks to add value in old and new ways…and to facilitate use that upholds copyright, providing innovative access to the highest quality and rarest resources....”— Suzanne BeDell, ProQuest, VP of Publishing

Country Insight
Euromonitor International; www.euromonitor.com

Aimed at nonbusiness researchers, this online tool analyzes large datasets for various countries and describes market dynamics and global socioeconomic trends shaping world economies. Regions covered include Africa, Asia Pacific, Australasia, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America. The file consists of one- to two-page articles examining issues and trends; lengthy feature articles; graphs, charts, and rankings that provide overviews and enhance comparisons across countries; standardized country reports; and more.

HOW DOES IT WORK? The homepage has five basic sections. At screen left is a column topped by a Search box, followed by two Browse sections: Geographic regions and the following Subjects: Demographic, Economic, Energy and Environment, Income and Expenditure, Labour (beware: British spellings ahead!), Political, Social, and Trade and Investment. Mid-screen real estate is occupied by the latest articles added to the database, followed by a list of the newly added datafiles and an A–Z listing of country profiles. There is also a large graphic of currencies atop a list of Feature articles, with brief teaser abstracts.

CAN YOU AND YOUR PATRONS USE IT? I first clicked on the “Top Gun” article link, which noted that “the U.S. [was] the world’s largest military spender, with defence dominating the U.S federal budget, particularly since 2001.” It also noted that “the U.S. had the world’s highest military expenditure at $455.3 billion in 2004, which was more than nine times the value of the next largest spender, the U.K., with $47.4 billion at market exchange rates [MER].” Next came a five-color graph showing “the world’s largest military spenders in MER and PPP [purchasing power parity] terms and share of global military expenditure in MER terms.”

The next paragraph described the impact of all this on the U.S. federal government’s discretionary spending, followed by a pie chart showing percentages of its discretionary expenditure by sector for 2005. This was a powerful image: nearly half of the budget pie was represented by a dark red slice—the 49.1 percent for Defence; 3.5 percent to Homeland Security; 2.4 percent to International Assistance; and so on.

I then searched for articles about the impact of the UK’s military spending on the country’s economy. Besides the mention in the “Top Gun” article, searches for “uk military spending,” “british military spending,” “military spending,” and “defence” found only a regional profile for Western Europe listing the UK among other nations of the EU, with no further budget breakouts. Some powerful options became evident while perusing that country profile, including Print, Export to Acrobat, Export to Word, and Email Colleague.

HOW GOOD IS IT? Updated on a rolling basis, the file serves up expert information accessibly and without jargon. Owing to its superb design, impressive contents, and useful graphics, Country Insight is one of the best databases of its kind I have seen. It’s a 9.8 but would be a ten if it were a bit more affordable; frankly, the libraries that could really use it are least likely to have the money.

WHAT’S THE COST? The price for a 12-month academic subscription ranges between $7000 and $10,000.

THE BOTTOM LINE Country Insight is enthusiastically recommended for academic, public, and school libraries, as well as those supporting inter­disciplinary research requiring statistics and data. It will serve a very broad swath of “nonnumbers” folks well.