Other Online Resources
The Internet can be an excellent source for basic
background information, for contemporary news, and for government documents &
quantitative data relevant for the study of politics. That said, there is also a lot of
bad information available on the Internet; please be careful out there...! Use the same
rigorous standards that should be applied to printed materials in your evaluation of
online information.
On this page, you will find links relevant for
political research listed in five major groupings: research methods, social research data
archives, country & regional background information, contemporary online news, and
government documents & statistics (both national & international).
Click on the heading below to move to the section of
interest to you right now:
RESEARCH METHODS | DATA | COUNTRY BACKGROUND | NEWS | GOVERNMENT
SITES
RESEARCH METHODS
 | SurfStat
Australia
 | http://www.anu.edu.au/nceph/surfstat/surfstat-home/surfstat.html
This is an online statistics textbook and laboratory created by Keith Dear at the
University of Newcastle. The glossary
is very user-friendly and has links to more in-depth treatment of many of the defined
terms. |
|
| HyperStat Online
| http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/index.html
This is another online introductory statistics textbook created by David Lane of Rice
University. It contains solid treatment of many statistical issues complete with
supporting graphics. The glossary
at the site is searchable and is fully hyperlinked to the text itself. |
|
Click on the appropriate link to move within this document:
RESEARCH METHODS | DATA | COUNTRY
BACKGROUND | NEWS | GOVERNMENT SITES
SOCIAL RESEARCH DATA ARCHIVES
| Social
Science Information Gateway
| http://sosig.ac.uk/
This comprehensive site is maintained by the Economic and Social Research Council, the
largest supporter of social science research in the United Kingdom. This link takes you to
the browsing menu where you can browse resources by subject area in the social sciences or
by geographic region. |
|
| Social Sciences Data
Collection
| http://ssdc.ucsd.edu/index.html
This site maintained by the University of California, San Diego contains a variety of
economic and political data as well a host of information on other sites that have
online data archives; there is a search engine for this catalog as well as a links page with
thumbnail discussions of the sites. Most of the economic data housed at the site itself
are restricted to UCSD use only. |
|
| Inter-University Consortium for
Political and Social Research
| http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ACCESS/other-data.html
The ICPSR holds the world's largest archive of political research data. This link
takes you to a links page maintained by the ICPSR to other major data archives. The ICPSR
website itself contains a searchable index for the archive complete with abstracts and
codebooks. The data themselves cannot be downloaded directly from the site by general
users; if you are interested in a particular data set, let me know. |
|
| The Gallup Organization
| http://www.gallup.com/
One of the world's oldest and largest professional polling organizations, Gallup places a
few of its more recent public opinion poll results online. |
|
Click on the appropriate link to move within this document:
RESEARCH METHODS | DATA | COUNTRY
BACKGROUND | NEWS | GOVERNMENT SITES
COUNTRY and REGIONAL BACKGROUND
| CIA
Publications Page
| http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/
This page contains links to online access of public domain CIA reporting. The CIA Factbook
provides thumbnail physical, economic, & political geographies of every nation-state
in the world. This page also contains links to CIA publications providing international
economic statistics, lists of current political leaders, high quality maps, and a variety
of historical information on the CIA itself. This site is very useful as a preliminary
introduction to countries but not very useful beyond that purpose. |
|
| U.S.
Department of State Background Notes
| http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/
The State Department background notes contain some of the basic geographical information
provided in the CIA Factbook but also provide short histories of a few
international organizations as well as reports on most nation-states. This links page hold
links to regions and to IGOs but the regional links take you to links pages for the
country notes for each region. If you click on the publications link on the
image map at the top of the background notes page, you can access a wide variety of
additional State Department reports including such topics as anti-narcotic policy,
counterterrorism, economic policy, and human rights. |
|
| Library of Congress
Country Studies
| http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html
This page provides access to the online version of the country studies series conducted
by the U.S. Library of Congress. Just under 100 countries are currently treated in the
site. Each country study has a detailed, hyperlinked table of contents; most of the study
is organized chronologically. This is a good site for finding a fairly comprehensive
online history of many different countries but is cumbersome to read an entire history
and even more burdensome (not to mention wasteful) to print one out. If you want to read
the entire country study, go to the library and check it out! |
|
| The International Affairs
Network: Virtual Library
| http://www.etown.edu/vl/
This site maintained by Elizabethtown College contains links pages
organized by a variety of subject headings as well as an incomplete list
of country headings. The area studies and subject links are generally
more useful than the country links provided |
|
Click on the appropriate link to move within this document:
RESEARCH METHODS | DATA | COUNTRY
BACKGROUND | NEWS | GOVERNMENT SITES
NEWS
| Yahoo!
online newspapers list
| http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/Newspapers/By_Region/Countries/Back in the hazy past of, say, 1992, people interested in reading foreign newspapers
waited 1 to 2 weeks to read foreign daily newspapers -- that is, if the newspapers were
available at all either in a nearby library or via a (costly) personal subscription. Now,
literally hundreds of daily newspapers around the world are available online
before they
hit the streets in newsprint. Increasing numbers of online papers provide 24-hour
updating of major stories. This site, maintained by Yahoo!, provides a comprehensive list
of foreign & domestic newspapers available online. Please take advantage of this
resource in following contemporary events in the countries of special interest to you.
Many newspapers have internal search engines and/or archives with past online
editions. |
|
| The Economist
| http://www.economist.com/
This is the online site for what many people consider the best international weekly news
magazine in the world, the London-based The Economist. Right now, this site
provides very limited services to those who are not subscribers but it does have a very
useful full-text search engine for issues published in the last few years. You can use
this search engine to identify issues to read in printed copies available in the library.
If you have a keen interest in world affairs, you should consider spending some time
every week with The Economist. |
|
| CNN's World News Section
| http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/
This site maintained by CNN provides coverage of major news stories from around the world.
If you have a single PC that you use for browsing, you can now set up a personal,
customized page with CNN in which you set filters based on countries and/or topics of
interest. CNN will occasionally publish background reports on major stories.
CNN also provides extensive coverage of U.S. politics at its AllPolitics site. |
|
| New York Times
| http://www.nytimes.com/
This site is listed here mainly to encourage you to use the printed version rather than
the online version. The 365-day, full-text search engine is dynamic, but you need to
establish one (free) account to use the site at all and, in turn, a second account to use
the search engine. All past editions of the newspaper, a printed index, and a
searchable database are all available in Carrier Library. |
|
| The Washington Post
| http://www.washingtonpost.com/
In contrast to the New York Times site, this one provides free full-text searches
of the past 14 days' editions. The online version of the newspaper is also a little
easier to use and much quicker to download. The politics and world online
sections
provide a host of information on major continuing stories (listed as special reports) as
well as links to other online sources of political news. There is also an informative
weekly online column on polling trends and
issues in
polling. |
|
Click on the appropriate link to move within this document:
RESEARCH METHODS | DATA | COUNTRY
BACKGROUND | NEWS | GOVERNMENT SITES
GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS and STATISTICS
| Here are a few starter links to official sites of national governments:
| FirstGov
 | http://www.firstgov.gov/
This is the official web portal of the U.S. government. The full
site is organized by government branch but also contains several
topically oriented links pages. |
|
| FOREIGN
GOVERNMENT RESOURCES on the WEB
| http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/foreign.html
This links page is maintained by the library at the University of Michigan. It is
organized first by regions and then by national governments. For each nation-state listed
there is a brief discussion of official government websites. |
|
| FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS
| http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govpub/resource/internat/foreign.html
This links page is maintained by the library at Northwestern University. It is (large)
single page organized alphabetically by nation. It is perhaps more exhaustive for many
countries than the above Michigan site, but the links are not annotated and the site is
not searchable. |
|
|
| Here are a few links to official sites of intergovernmental
organizations:
| INTERNATIONAL
AGENCIES and INFORMATION on the WEB
| http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/intl.html
This site is maintained by the library at the University of Michigan. It is a
searchable site with a detailed, annotated list of websites for IGOs. This is a very
useful links page. |
|
| INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
| http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govpub/resource/internat/igo.html
This links page is maintained by the library at Northwestern University. It is (large)
single page organized alphabetically by organization. It is similar to the Michigan site,
but each contains quite a few different links. This site is not annotated, but does
provide a series of distinct URLs for many organizations. |
|
| UNITED NATIONS
| http://www.unsystem.org/
This is the site locator for all websites maintained by the United Nations and the
multitude of organizations in the U.N. system. The site also contains a links page for
other international organizations. |
|
| THE WORLD BANK
| http://www.worldbank.org/
The World Bank posts online economic and social data for countries around the world. |
|
| ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT
(OECD)
| http://www.oecd.org/
The OECD provides detailed statistical information on its member nations as well as a
variety of economic analyses available online. |
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Click on the appropriate link to move within this document:
RESEARCH METHODS | DATA | COUNTRY
BACKGROUND | NEWS | GOVERNMENT SITES |
