The Doe & Moffitt Libraries at the University of California, Berkeley have recently launched a Google Custom Search engine on site that “targets 800+ academic, government agency, non-profit, and other web sites that provide high quality, downloadable statistical information and data sets. Emphasis is on data pertaining to the social sciences, health, developing countries, energy, natural resources, and the environment.”
The venerable University of Michigan Document Center website has just been relaunched with an attractive redesign. You can now search as well as browse topics and results lists feature a very helpful “filter by subtopic” feature. All urls and rss feed addresses have been changed so you’ll want to update those if you link to/rely on them.
Speaking of the rss feed: a recent post features the excellent website maintained by FRASER – the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
- “Provides monetary and banking statistics, 1896-1970, and can be used in conjunction with FRED to provide economic time series for the 20th Century
- Web site also provides digitized version of early 20th Century Commerce Department documents, including Business Statistics, Survey of Current Business, Economic Indicators, and Economic Reports of the President.”
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BC’s HST
The 208 page report was released Tuesday and was sponsored by the UN Development Program. The report written by more than 100 independent intellectuals and scholars from Arab countries discusses the challenges to human security in the Arab countries.
You can find the entire report here
The OECD has just launched a new page that it is calling “Statistical Narratives.” The aim of this page is to feature select statistical tables – usually from a topical subject – and present them with a brief explanatory article. The result? A sort of news feature mashed up with supporting data. The articles are readable and go a long way to providing context for the statistics. OECD hopes that the page will “build knowledge from statistics, as well as give users a sense of what statistics are available from the OECD.”
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US Presidential Documents
Back in January 2009, the weekly compilation of US Presidential Documents morphed into a daily compilation. It’s available from GPO access at: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/presdocs/index.html. The current database includes all materials from the weekly compilation dating back to 1993.
“It includes such material as:
- Proclamations
- Executive orders
- Speeches
- Press conferences
- Communications to Congress and Federal agencies
- Statements regarding bill signings and vetoes
- Appointments, nominations
- Reorganization plans
- Resignations
- Retirements
- Acts approved by the President
- Nominations submitted to the Senate
- White House announcements
- Press releases”
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G8 Summit Resource
Well, this find seemed topical. There is a G8 research group at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. The group maintains a very useful website: http://www.g8.utoronto.ca/ which provides access to a large chunk of the group’s analysis and reports. Monographs published by commercial publishers are not available online.
The site also links to available “Delegations; declaration and communiqués; other official releases; documents released by national delegations at summits; available transcripts of summit news conferences” for G8 & G7 summits dating back to the 1975 Summit in Rambouillet.
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World Bank e-Library Trial
UBC has a trial to the World Bank e-Library and a few other of their databases until the end of August.
You can access the trial page here
World Bank e-Library: An electronic portal to the World Bank’s full-text collection of books, journals, working papers and other documents on social and economic development. It is the most comprehensive collection in the area and brings together a fully indexed and cross-searchable database of thousands of World Bank publications.
Africa Development Indicators Online: Provides the most comprehensive collection of data on the African economy. It contains data for over 1,400 indicators and time series from 1965 for 53 coutnries. Data include social, economic, financial, natural resources, infrastructure, governance, partnership, and enviornmental indicators.
Global Development Finance: The World’s Bank annual assessment of global financial conditions facing emerging markets. Offers external debt and financial flow data for 129 countries that report public and publicly guaranteed debt to the World Bank’s Debtor Reporting System. Time series includes over 200 indicators from 1970-2017.
Global Economic Monitor (GEM): Features up-to-date analysis of global economic conditions, including a daily brief and event-driven focus reports.
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All about Europe
The wonderful librarians at Intute found two new online documents – both covering the EU.
1) Financial Management in the European Union is a report that was published by the UK House of Commons Public Accounts Committee with the aim of assessing “the financial management and performance of the EU. It covers efficiency, anti-fraud measures in EU accounting and future reforms required.”
Excerpts from the Conclusions and Recommendations:
- “There remains an unacceptably high level of error in some key budget areas and consequently, for the fourteenth successive year, the European Court of Auditors has not provided a positive overall Statement of Assurance on the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions.”
- “In 2005, we highlighted the inherent complexity of some European programmes as a major factor leading to error, but this complexity persists, as do the resultant errors.”
- “Ongoing problems with controls over Cohesion policy expenditure are, in effect, condemning the European Union accounts to qualification for many years to come.”
Yikes! There’s loads more so if you are interested in accountability, public spending, fraud and the EU you know where to go!
2) ESF Demography Report 2008. This is a free report that is published by the European Commission every two years. “The 2008 version reports on the aging society and changing family and households in EU countries….(and focuses on) fertility rates, life expectancy, migration, marriage and composition of households.”