country profiles – St. Thomas Libraries Blog

UPDATE – Statesman’s Yearbook

Tuesday, April 30 UPDATE: No news is bad news. Still not working.

Monday, April 29th UPDATE: Sigh. Not working again. Really? REALLY?

Wednesday, April 24 UPDATE: It appears that all is working in Statesman’s Yearbook. If you experience otherwise, please contact Carolyn DeLuca (2-5012) as soon as you spot the problem. Thanks for your patience.

Tuesday, April 23 UPDATE: Still not working. Still working with tech support, who have asked me the same questions over and over with the same result – no access. This is getting tedious. Yikes! This is a terrible update. I wish I had better news.

It appears we’ve been having technical difficulties all weekend with access to the Statesman’s Yearbook, which is a bummer cuz I know there’s at least one person out there who is really itching to use it. I’ve been working with Palgrave (Statesman’s Yearbook parent company) all day to figure out the problem and they seem to be stymied. Rest assured, they are still working on the problem and I’m still troubleshooting with them. However, in the meantime where does that leave you SY fans? Thankfully, not totally out there in the cold (and snow). You can contact a librarian to get a particular report from the SY if need be (it sometimes works from on campus), or you can try using the following, similar sources:

Political Handbook of the World Online Edition
Political science and journalism researchers will find this resource useful for comprehensive country profiles, chronicles of national history, government, and political parties, as well as information on intergovernmental organizations, development banks, and the agencies and specialized bodies of the United Nations.
World Factbook
Produced by the CIA, each country’s profile includes such information as demographics, and political, economic, and geographic data.
Political Risk Yearbook
Provides 45-65 page overviews of the history, economy, politics, and risk forecasts for 100 countries. It provides 10 years of economic data, with description and analysis of the political players and situation written by experts.

April 22, 2013 by

Political Science, Uncategorized

Facts on File World News Digest

I’ll admit it, I’m a geek. I love data and Facts on File World News Digest provides me with mounds of data. By the time you read this, the 2012 London Olympics will be in the history books – or in the World News Digest chronological timeline which gives you such data as the number of visitors – from 380,000 in 1896 (not too shabby) to 6.5 million in Beijing. I could calculate the increase but you can tell it was a big increase. It also tells you how many countries participated – from 14 at the Athens olympics in 1896 to 204 in Beijing. The feminist in me wanted to see what percentage of the athletes were women. The change is astounding. In 1896, the first modern olympiad, there were only 241 athletes – none of them were women. In 2008 there were 10,946 athletes and 42% were women. For the US, title 9 changed everything for women’s sports. I wonder if that has spurred other countries to change their funding mechanisms too so that they can be competitive with the U.S. women.

But this is a scintilla of the information available. There is a searchable encyclopedia and almanc and then in depth articles and information on elections. The curriculum tools will help you choose a subject for a paper and then provide timelines to use to follow your topic. The research topics go from Abortion to Supreme Court nominations.

There are country profiles, too. And the information goes back to the 1940’s.

And includes editorial cartoons like this one. But not only the cartoon, oh no. It includes discussion questions on the cartoon. Try it out. Worth your time.

September 10, 2012 by