e-Reviews: Secrets, Stats, Statecraft

Global politics is one of those areas where the interests of scholars, researchers, participants, and students can often be matched in their intensity by the concerns of ordinary citizens. When we last examined resources on global politics five years ago, the emphasis was almost entirely on bibliographic databases with online full text. The resources in this group represent a shift toward the direct delivery of information to the end user, who now works with much more potent and versatile research tools.

In addition, while it is obvious (from much of what passes for reporting and commentary in the media) that solid, accurate, authoritative information is not a prerequisite for engaging in political dialog, reliable information remains the hallmark of these resources.

Europa World has a lineage that extends back over 80 years, while CQ Global Researcher, with a pedigree no less distinguished, is just a few months old. Also, WDI (World Development Indicators) Online permits social science researchers to back up their theories and arguments with some serious quantitative muscle.

The fascinating Digital National Security Archive represents the archive’s amazing determination to uncover, acquire, and organize classified materials that were in all likelihood never intended by their creators to see the light of day. And CIAO assembles scholarly and think tank pieces representing the diverse spectrum of political thought and action, thus epitomizing the whole process of honest, substantive political give and take.

Columbia Univ.

Content A modestly priced, highly focused collection of research-quality international relations material, CIAO is one of the true gems in the e-resources market. Aiming to serve as “the most comprehensive source for theory and research in international affairs,” CIAO gives the serious researcher access to an appealing array of scholarly products, including the contents of over 60 research journals, more than 130 working papers and conference proceedings, books and chapters of books from over 30 publishers, and policy briefs and economic indicators from 44 U.S. and international think tanks.

For students and educators, there are three dozen case studies prepared by recognized scholars that examine key historical events, from “Climate Change” to “The Russian Nuclear Arsenal” to “Irish Troubles Since 1916.” Four new ones, all on Iraq, were added in 2007. These run from ten to over 40 pages in length and, aside from analyzing the event at hand, include extensive bibliographies for further research, time lines, multimedia materials, and primary sources such as laws, treaties, and speeches.

Also for educators, there are coursepacks on subjects such as globalization, land mines, the war on terror, and human rights. These are preselected collections of materials “chosen to provide students with opposing views and provocative arguments.” A small collection of syllabi along with the monthly thematic compilations of materials from the CIAO database known as focuses are also archived on the site.

In mid-2007, the fruits of a new partnership with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) became evident on the CIAO site. Located in the Atlas section, the EIU content includes maps and basic political and economic data for 201 countries. This section is updated quarterly while CIAO itself undergoes extensive monthly updating (a monthly email newsletter alerts subscribers to new material). Coverage extends back to 1991.

Not everything in CIAO is in full text, however. The CIAO imprint and Columbia University Press monographic titles are all available electronically, but the works of other presses are sometimes represented by just an abstract, table of contents, the introduction, or a sample chapter.

Nearly half the journals include less than complete full text. Electronic access to CIAO’s policy briefs and working papers does appear to be complete, although, again, currency is an issue. While the Brookings Institution is represented by 16 working papers and six policy briefs from 2007, other sources have not added new titles for several years.

Searchability The homepage is arranged into three columns, with links to the various types of materials (working papers, policy briefs, etc.) occupying the left-hand frame and the monthly CIAO Focus piece (“Population and Environment” in November 2007) in the center frame. The Simple Search capabilities as well as links to the Advanced Search mode, online Help, featured content, and the new user guide reside in the right-hand frame.

Simple Search mode is actually quite practical. The various CIAO content types—working papers, journals, books, policy briefs, and case studies—each have a check box of their own, which is checked on by default. There’s a pull-down subject menu from which the searcher may choose a region, major country, major intergovernmental organization, or a subject such as Debt Relief, Migration, or Security. A date range pull-down allows the user to limit a search to All Dates, Current Year, Previous 2 Yrs, or Previous 5 Yrs.

Selecting Cold War from the subject pull-down and clicking on the search button takes users to the Advanced Search page, where the quick search has been transformed into a strategy by which the phrase Cold War must appear somewhere in the body of some document in the database. In this case, there is a results list of over 12,000 items, 500 of them sorted by relevance.

Advanced Search mode is made up of three search boxes and their associated pull-down menus. The first serves essentially as a Boolean operator and specifies that any hit produced by the search should contain, must contain, or must not contain the search term entered. The second pull-down directs that the term entered appear in a specific field, namely, in the body, in the title, in the author’s name, or in the contributing institution’s name, and the last allows the user to specify whether the search terms be found as words or as a phrase. The contents of the three search boxes are ANDed together.

The pull-down subject menu appears below the search template, along with one for Regions (including major organizations and countries), and a date limiting menu. CIAO content collections may also be checked to limit searching more precisely.

What is disconcerting is that selecting Cold War from the subject menu on the Advanced Search page produces dramatically different results (i.e., just 128 hits) than selecting the same subject term in Simple Search mode. Presumably, this is the result of using the controlled vocabulary, but it’s unclear why the subject menu on the Simple Search page implies a search of the controlled vocabulary but in fact does something else entirely.

Simple adjacency is achieved by enclosing phrases in quotation marks, but no other proximity operators are available. CIAO supports wildcards and truncation, although only when used with single words (as opposed to phrases).

There’s a site index to authors, subjects, and titles for books, journals, policy briefs and economic indicators, working papers, and for all of CIAO. While part of CIAO’s appeal stems from its home-grown quality, CIAO does lack some capabilities that are now fairly standard, such as marking results, reformatting for printing, emailing results, sorting, and linking to local holdings for books and journals that are not in the database in full text. CIAO also lacks the customizable features like alerts, saving search strategies, or bookmarking that users of other resources take for granted.

Price Type and size of institution determine annual subscription costs (available on the CIAO site). Academic subscribers at institutions with fewer than 1000 FTEs pay $495, and annual costs increase to a maximum of $1,515 for schools with enrollment beyond the 30,000 mark. High schools pay a flat $295 per year. Other institutions are charged based on the number of FTEs at a single site, starting at $655 (for places with fewer than 250 employees) and climbing to $1,445 (for sites with 1000 or more). Independent research institutions with 50 or fewer employees receive a special rate of $395, and personal subscriptions are priced at $295. Free 30-day trials are also available.

Who Needs It? Despite the quirkiness of its search engine, this resource can be manipulated with considerable precision. The content—including peer-reviewed research, cutting-edge working papers, and provocative think tank briefs—is its greatest strength. The materials it makes available are well suited to the needs of serious international affairs researchers. Features like the CIAO focuses, case studies, and coursepacks are perfectly geared toward the pedagogical needs of high school and college instructors.

The new alliance with the EIU with its added political and economic country data makes this a fairly complete resource in and of itself. Researchers in nonacademic settings, where international policy and business interests are of primary concern, will find incredible value here.

CQ Pr.

Content One of the newest resources within the CQ Press array, CQ Global Researcher is modeled after the popular CQ Researcher database, providing users with in-depth coverage and analysis of current vital global affairs from a number of international perspectives, all within a very reader-friendly framework.

For users familiar with CQ Researcher, each single-topic/themed report contains the same recognizable sections, such as Overview, Background, Current Situation, Pro/Con, and Chronology (in a new time line format). Additional sections include Short Features (for a contextual viewpoint), Maps/Graphs, and Voices from Abroad, which includes quotes from various individuals on both sides of the fence, e.g., media, lawmakers, academics, interest group representatives, government officials, and citizens involved in a particular issue.

Available online only, each 12,000-plus-word report is written by a professional journalist, beginning with an introductory overview and concluding with an annotated bibliography of key sources and “Next Steps” for additional readings, as well as the author’s profile.

Authors include an Asia-Pacific enterprise editor for the Associated Press, international editor at United Press International, legal affairs reporter at CQ Weekly Report, and a U.S. correspondent for Europolitics, the EU affairs daily newspaper.

Users can view the entire report in color PDF format (typically 26–30 pages) and/or email or print the full report or any desired section. Available since April 2007, new reports are published on the first Monday of each month and include, for example, Radical Islam in Europe, World Peacekeeping, and Torture Debate. Future issues will include Turkey Today, China in Africa, and Water Scarcity.

For those institutions that subscribe to both Researcher products, the newly redesigned CQ Researcher web site (still in beta) includes a sidebar with recent reports from both Researcher and Global Researcher. Articles are integrated into the web site’s search results; the Issue Tracker, Topic or Date Browse, clearly identifies the origin of the listed reports.

Users can create a personal profile account for Saved Searches, Document History, Favorite Documents, or E-mail Alerts. The account will stay active until there is 24 months of nonuse. Additionally, a newsletter alerting service will soon be available for upcoming issues, new features, and news.

Searchability CQ Global Researcher packs a lot of content and contextual data within its simple framework, especially practical for users desiring clear-cut global perspectives on current international events and activities. Organized using the three-column approach, it provides numerous navigation options, with a visibly colorful snapshot of the current report available via center stage of the web site, which includes the introduction of the issues or “Overview” and a snippet of the “Pro/Con” section.

Recent and upcoming reports are highlighted on the right side, with Search/Browse/User Profile features easily accessible on the left.

Once the “Read the full report” link is selected, the entire issue can be read, or any desired section(s) can be selected via links on the left-side frame. When viewing the complete issue, the Issue Tracker for related reports, as well as a Browse Related Topics link, is presented in a sidebar. This feature allows users to focus on similar reports/themes without performing any additional query.

As the interface integrates content from both Researcher databases, a small icon quickly identifies the origin and date of the related issue. For example, with Radical Islam in Europe, the tracker includes reports on Port Security, Global Jihad, and Policing the Borders, as well as related browsing options for Islam, Immigration and Naturalization, and Regional Political Affairs: Europe.

Search modes include Quick, located at the top of the opening screen, and Advanced, with numerous limiting options including by Keyword/all text, Report Titles only, Topics only, World Region, Topic, Report Section, and Date range.

Browsing is another way to hone in on the desired subject matter; by Topic, Date, and Country and the latest update of CQ Global Researcher allow researchers to search for all documents related to given geographic areas and individual states via a new, interactive, global map. Given the newness of the resource, the browse feature will be more significant as additional content gets added.

A “CiteNow” feature is present throughout the session, allowing users to create bibliographic citations for the entire report or desired section in APA, Bluebook, Chicago, or MLA style and export the citation to several citation management software packages, including EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, or .rtf format.

CQ offers 17 “modules” or collections, which can be cross-searched (if subscribed to) using the CQ Electronic Library (CQEL) search interface. In the Advanced mode, researchers can search specific collections or all those associated with their institution. Results are organized by collection as well as document type and can easily be sorted by Title, Date, and Product.

Price Current subscription price is a flat- rate fee ($450) minus any consortial discount. Free trials are available.

Who Needs It? It’s a no-brainer, especially for those subscribing to CQ Researcher or CQ Researcher Plus Archive. As with CQ Researcher, the “Contacts” section in Global provides access for additional information from government agencies, think tanks, and other international organizations, which students will appreciate. The overall content and coverage, as well as the integration with other resources, make this resource quite attractive for secondary and academic institutions. And with the current pricing structure, how can you go wrong?

ProQuest-CSA & the National Security Archive

Content The result of the collaborative efforts of the National Security Archive, an independent, nongovernmental research institute located at George Washington University, and ProQuest-CSA, the Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) is a unique resource comprised chiefly of declassified documents acquired via the archive’s extensive and highly effective use of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It currently includes well over 60,000 formerly classified documents, many of which are seeing the light of day for the first time.

DNSA is organized into 29 distinct collections, each with a single topical focus. These cover, for example, policy in Afghanistan (1973–90), El Salvador (1977–84), Iran (1977–80), Nicaragua (1978–90), the Philippines (1978–90), South Africa (1962–89), and the Vietnam War (Pt. 1: 1954–68 & Pt. 2: 1969–75).

The Cuban Missile Crisis is covered in two collections, with another devoted to the Berlin Crisis. Other relevant collections include Iraqgate: Saddam Hussein, U.S. Policy and the Prelude to the Persian Gulf War, 1980–1994, and China and the U.S.: From Hostility to Engagement, 1960–1998.

There are several collections that focus on intelligence, terrorism, and national security in general, including Presidential Directives on National Security. Pt. 1 covers the administrations from Truman to Clinton, and Pt. 2 from Clinton to George W. Bush. There is also The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947–1991; Terrorism and U.S. Policy, 1968–2002; U.S. Espionage and Intelligence, 1947–1996; and The U.S. Intelligence Community: Organizations, Operations, and Management, 1947–1989.

Newly added collections include The Kissinger Transcripts: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969–1977, and U.S. Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction: From World War II to Iraq. Also on the horizon is the addition of Peru: Human Rights, Drugs and Democracy, 1980–2000.

DNSA comprises more than 676,000 pages worth of images running the gamut of primary source material. Policy documents, presidential directives, White House communications, memos, diplomatic dispatches, notes on meetings, independent reports, briefing papers, email, confidential letters, and other items are all represented, and each has been thoroughly indexed and abstracted. Coverage extends from 1945 through 2006 and continues to grow in size.

Searchability The lean design of the DNSA homepage makes it easy to get right down to business. On the left side of the screen is a Quick Search box and below that a second grouping of options for searching Documents, the Bibliography, the Chronology, or the Glossary. There’s a brief description of the resource in the center frame.

The right-hand frame includes a link to more information on the newest addition to the database (on U.S. intelligence and WMD) plus a link to the open access version of the National Security Archive web site (www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv). This is definitely worth a serious look.

In early December 2007, there was news of the recent release of the deadly serious documents relating to the Kennedy-McNamara era nuclear war plan (“New Evidence on the Origins of Overkill”); an electronic briefing book on the unreliable Iraq war intelligence source known as Curveball; and photos of the Oval Office meeting between Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley.

Below the homepage banner are links to Information Resources (which provides some basic technical information as well as information for resource administrators), My Archive (where users can set up a profile and save searches and selected records from a marked list), Help, and Collections Guide.

The Collections Guide precisely describes each collection, and it is the thoroughness and professionalism of this feature that distinguish this from many other collections of primary source materials. U.S. Military Uses of Space, 1945–1991 begins with a link to an Essay and to the Acknowledgements. The latter cites the contributions of project staff, the efforts of a number of research assistants and interns, the advice and support of several scholars, the archive’s marketing director, Chadwyck-Healey, and, interestingly, the FOIA personnel in a number of defense-related government agencies and offices.

The Essay traces the quest for the high ground back to a 1946 RAND Corporation study entitled Preliminary Design for an Experimental World Circling Spaceship and discusses military space support systems, space weaponry, launch systems and launch centers, ground control, and policy formation and implementation. In other words, it gives the researcher a scholarly synopsis of this topic and provides a clear sense of its importance.

The formal Introduction to this collection is another work of pure professionalism. The subject experts on the archive staff lay out the Scope of the Document Set (dates, number, and type of documents and their sources), Excluded Materials (in this case, things like Congressional hearings that may be obtained elsewhere), Research Value of the Document Set, Limitations of the Document Set (notes on security-related deletions and on documents that remain classified), Characteristics of the Document Set (an accounting of the types of documents), and Project Methodology.

The methodology involves setting up a balanced review panel of subject experts, identification of target documentation, construction of a detailed chronology of events, acquisition process using FOIA and Mandatory Declassification Review, glossary creation, and cataloging of the collected resources. Collections may also have a Photo Archives or special indexes. The Methodology section, in and of itself, is a lesson in how to organize and carry out a research project.

Researchers access the contents of the collections via the links for searching Documents, Bibliography, Chronology, or Glossary that appear on every page. Search Documents mode permits searching by keyword, personal name or organization, subject, title, classification level, document type, and by the creator or distributor of a document and its recipient.

Date limiting is done via a pull-down menu, and one or more collections may be searched using the check boxes that appear next to each listing. It is also possible to search by document or cable number and by the DNSA item number.

The document type and classification have long lists of possibilities that may be checked and imported into a search. There is no corresponding list for subjects, however, so these will have to be gleaned from the results lists.

Some searches that history tells us should work—e.g., howard hunt in the Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited collection; bin laden in the Afghanistan collection; war crimes in the Kissinger Transcripts—simply aren’t successful. A search for the document type Cable containing the keywords berlin wall from the Berlin Crisis collection produced 45 records, beginning with a statement from Secretary of State Dean Rusk denouncing the closing of the East Berlin–West Berlin border and describing the refugees who had recently flooded over the border as having “voted with their feet on whether communism is the wave of the future.” Cables coming from the German Democratic Republic side add considerably to both the tension of the situation and the value of the resource.

A Chronology search on glaspie and saddam and meeting identifies the meeting between the Iraqi president and the American ambassador to Baghdad in which April Glaspie “indicates that the U.S. has no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts, such as Iraq’s dispute with Kuwait.” Taking the same strategy into the Documents search mode produces the transcript of the meeting itself.

Results may be sorted by date and marked for email, printing, downloading, or saving. Boolean operators, truncation, and wildcards are all available, and searching with a phrase in quotation marks produces more precise results, although the Help makes no mention of this.

What researchers can’t do, however, is search by keyword through the PDF documents they’ve downloaded. This may effectively simulate the laborious process of digging through an archival collection, but it makes the job of honing in on an isolated reference a lot more difficult.

Price A DNSA subscription for an undergraduate institution or community college with an FTE under 5000 is $2,131. The perpetual access option runs $14,000 plus an annual access fee of $800. Free trials are available.

Who Needs It? Using self-promotional claims from a product web site as a way to sum up the sense of its value should be avoided, but in this instance they are pretty accurate and worth noting: “In its totality, the DNSA offers the most effective research and teaching tool available in the area of U.S. foreign policy, intelligence, and security issues during this pivotal period of 20th century history, and into the 21st century.”

It is also one of those few resources that is intrinsically interesting, extending its appeal beyond disciplinary and academic interests. In fact, this could be a highly used resource in a public library setting as well as at the AP level in high schools.

Routledge: Taylor & Francis

Content Europa World Year Book has served as an authoritative source for basic information on countries and their relations with other nations for over 80 years. It has long since outgrown its Eurocentric title and now includes articles on 250 lands and territories as well as the UN and over 50 major international intergovernmental organizations, from the African Development Bank to the World Trade Organization. Brief directory-type entries for well over 1000 organizations are included as well.

Europa World (EW) is the online version of this classic print resource, and its interactive features, specifically its ability to generate user-customized comparative statistics, make it much more than an online reference e-text.

Searchability The EW web site is laid out with a quick search box at the top right-center of the screen, with a navigational toolbar situated directly below. The toolbar divides the page horizontally, with a Table of Contents located in the left-hand frame and a main frame that contains information about the resource and recent news and updates to EW’s contents. The toolbar itself is a powerful way to access this resource, with links to the Advanced Search mode, separate links to alphabetical lists of Countries and Organizations, an online Help link, and a pull-down country menu.

The main frame of the homepage offers a brief description of the resource itself, product news, links to information on recent elections, a featured country, and a handful of brief articles on recent events. The latter includes things like elections in Denmark, the resignation of a key government and party figure in Germany, an appointment to the International Monetary Fund, and the reshuffling of ministerial portfolios in New Zealand.

While users can appreciate this accessible roundup of events of both major and more arcane significance, the entries were nearly a week out-of-date. This means that serious students of international relations will have to seek out more timely news sources.

Although not a source for up-to-the-minute news, EW in its online version is still far more current than any reference book ever could be. For example, a search for tony blair in the Quick Search yields 22 items, including one on “The United Kingdom,” which notes Gordon Brown’s mid-2007 succession as prime minister.

It’s likely that most users will employ the pull-down menu labeled “Select a country then press GO” as their main route into EW’s contents. This takes them to a page with a brief 100- to 150-word entry for the country, thumbnail images of the map and flag, and basic information on Area and Population, Finance, and Government and Politics.

Additionally, there are links to more detailed information, including a country profile, country statistics, and three directories covering Government and Politics, Society and Media, and Business and Commerce. There is also a link to a bibliography. These links are also repeated in the frame on the left-hand side of the screen, so a nice degree of navigational redundancy is achieved through clever design without cluttering up the page.

Much of the meat of EW appears in the Country Profile part of the entry, which is organized into the following subsections: Location, Climate, Language, Religion, Flag, Capital; Recent History; Government, Defence; Economic Affairs; Education; Public Holidays; and Weights and Measures. These are entries of considerable substance. The “Recent History” of Afghanistan, for example, is nearly 17,000 words long (and was current though April 2007 at the time of this review) while the entire Economic Affairs section runs to nearly 2300 words. The correct citation format for EW entries appears at the end of each section, a welcome practice that makes the lives of researchers considerably easier.

The Country Statistics section includes figures on Area and Population, Health and Welfare, Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing, Mining, Industry, Finance, External Trade, Transport, Tourism, Communications Media, and Education. Generally, the data is given annually for three years running, and, depending on the source, it is presented in tabular format, although sometimes as text.

Researchers looking to construct a sophisticated statistical analysis or wanting to examine long-term trends will have to go to another source, but anyone hoping to get a current statistical overview should find this feature quite valuable, particularly if they use the Comparative Statistics capabilities.

Selecting the Comparative Statistics option on the main page allows researchers to select countries of interest (e.g., Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Panama) and one variable (e.g., Infant mortality rate) and then see how these countries compare to one another and the rest of the world. Results are presented almost immediately on screen as a table and as a bar chart for 1990, 1995, 2000, and 2003 in this case, and the source of the data is also listed.

Results may also be downloaded as a web page in HTML format, as comma-separated values, or as tab-separated values. Try that with a reference book.

Advanced Search offers three distinct options: Free Text, Organizations and People, and Publications. Free Text searching gives the user an array of radio buttons with which to target a specific content type (i.e., a country or territory overview, statistical information, directory entry, or organization).

Two other content types—Long Text and Short Text—are likely to be somewhat mysterious to the user, and there is nothing in Help that clarifies their meaning. A pull-down menu allows the user to limit the search to a specific country or countries.

The Organizations and People search allows the user to search for organizations by name. A detailed pull-down menu permits limiting by organization type, although it is also possible to search with the organization type menu alone. For example, selecting The Press yields a list of some 2000 results.

The left-hand frame of the results list becomes a filter allowing the user to refine the search by country or content type. People can be searched by name or job title, and searches for both organizations and people may be limited by country using a pull-down menu.

Publication search in the Advanced mode lets the user type in a title (e.g., World Development Report) and discover its source as well as the other publications issued by that source. This is directory-type information, however; the contents of the publications themselves are not accessible.

Boolean operators are available as is truncation: we got 53 hits on dictator* with the standard asterisk as the truncation symbol compared to just 19 for dictator.

While printing is done via the browser, it is presentably formatted without the Table of Contents frame or navigational aids that appear on the search screen. Results may be emailed, and, as noted previously, there are a variety of output options for the results of statistical searches.

Price Routledge offers a range of annual subscription models, including options based on the number of concurrent users and FTE. Potential subscribers can learn more by clicking on the Pricing Enquiry link on the homepage, but a college with an FTE in the neighborhood of 2300 pays a little over $1200 annually.

Routledge also offers an enhanced version of the resource called Europa World Plus, a package that adds, at the subscriber’s request, any or all of the nine Europa Regional Surveys of the World to the basic Europa World subscription. Free trials are available.

Who Needs It? This online incarnation of a print classic makes a resource with an impeccable pedigree more accessible and, thanks to features like the Comparative Statistics search option, considerably more potent. EW should readily find an audience in academic settings where international politics, economics, or finance are taught, as well as in humanities area studies programs and in the social sciences in general.

World Bank

Content Corresponding to its print sister publication World Development Indicators, WDI Online is “the premier data source on the global economy,” with social, economic, financial, natural resources, and environmental indicators.

It contains statistical data for 737 development indicators and time series data from 1960 to 2006 for 228 countries and 18 country groups. Countries are classified within eight regions and 18 Aggregate Groups that include “High Income: OECD,” “Least Developed Countries,” and “World.”

Indicators are organized within ten topical categories: Balance of Payments, Development Framework, Environment, Exchange Rates & Prices, External Debt, Financial Statistics, Government Finance, National Accounts, Social Indicators, and Trade. Further refinement within these broad series areas leads to subcategories like Technology, Transportation, Land Use, Pollution, Education, Health, Labor Force, and Poverty & Income.

Data is updated twice a year; the spring update includes the latest-year data and coincides with the publication of the print version. The resource is also available in a single- and multiple-user CD-ROM. WDI Online allows users to create and extract customized datasets in ASCII or Excel format.

In lieu of trial access, World Bank offers open access to Quick Query, a subset of the complete WDI database. Quick Query includes the latest six years available, i.e., 54 time series indicators for 228 countries and 18 groups.

The 2007 edition of the print source includes more than 900 indicators in over 80 tables organized in six sections: World View, People, Environment, Economy, States and Markets, and Global Links. A link to the full text, as well as a comprehensive “Data and Statistics” page, is available throughout the entire online session. This instructive site offers extensive assistance with definitions and FAQs, as well as links to a variety of informational tools, databases, and relevant statistical data that can be exported.

The World Bank currently offers access for institutional subscribers to the “old” WDI Online, as well as to a next-generation, newly formatted interface. The new interface, still in the process of being upgraded, includes multilingual menu items; ten different chart types; improved mapping functions, with zoom and pan options; and the ability to save charts and maps as JPEG images.

Searchability Data selection and navigation is still straightforward within the new interface, and researchers of all levels can easily follow the step-by-step process for selection and viewing results.

Tabs include Select Variables (Country, Series, Time) and Show Report (Report, Chart, Map). Users can opt for the “alphabetical list” or “tree view” (hierarchical view) to select both the countries and series in turn. A progression of “Select” and “Next” buttons allow users to follow the bread crumbs to the results page, first for country selection, then for series and specific indicators, and finally for years.

In addition to selecting from either a tree-view of country classifications or an A–Z country list, users can choose from aggregated groups such as “Heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC)” “European Monetary Union,” or “North America.”

Each set of variables has a basic search option, allowing users to refine or focus in on specific areas of interest. Entering education, for example, retrieves 31 relevant series. Highlighting the desired series and selecting the notes tab offers a pop-up window with descriptive data as well as the source of the explanation.

Searchers must choose at least one item in each category to complete the query; if you forget to select a variable, the system clearly displays the following message: “Your query is incomplete.” We got this error message several times, even when we made the appropriate selections. We assume the bugs were not all worked out of this upgrade.

In the old interface, users could select the “View Results” tab to export the report, see a basic chart, and choose a few options for display. In the current format, the “Show Report” tab allows for viewing the report, as well as seeing it in chart form and map format.

The results page continues to be the most complex of the procedure, although users now have numerous options for viewing the data. The chart options (with ten different views) include vertical/horizontal bar, stacked area, vertical stacked bar, spline, radar, and bubble. Both the old and new formats provide linking to country notes, definitions of indicators, and extensive source notes.

The one thing to suggest here is a tad more help—possibly just for the Report Viewing, especially with the latest map, chart, and graph options.

Price WDI Online is available by individual or institutional subscription. For institutions, subscriptions are based on population served (FTE for university libraries and range from $2000 for fewer than 2500 population served for public and special libraries; discounts are available for developing-country residents). Individual access is $200.

Who Needs It? WDI Online is an essential research tool for economists, sociologists, political scientists, the business world, and anyone else interested in globalization and world development. Its simplicity of interface coupled with the complexity and customization features of dataset results make it a powerful tool for both subject specialists and casual users.