U.S. State Department country profiles.
Countries & Maps
Major Research Tools
Data, Full-text
Up-to-date profiles of countries of the world. Includes political histories, economic statistics, and directory-style information on politics, media, and business. A "comparative statistics" section can be used to generate tables of comparative data on countries in formats suitable for exporting into Excel or SPSS.
Full-text
Overviews of the geography, population, government, and economics of the countries of the world. From Oxford Reference Online.
Full-text
Lengthy reports on the history, society, and culture of individual countries published between 1988 and 1998. (Additional volumes in this series are available in Skillman's print collection.) Prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress.
Data
Coverage: 1960-present
Country-level, time series data from the World Bank. Topics covered include demographics, the economy, the environment, health, and education. Data may be saved as Excel or ASCII files.
Full-text
Data on the geography, demography, government, economics, etc. for every country in the world (courtesy of the CIA).
Visual resource
Political, physical, and locator maps for countries of the world. From Oxford Reference Online.
Other Suggested Research Tools
Data
"Presents in maps and text complete data about the creation and all subsequent changes (dated to the day) in the size, shape, and location of every county in the fifty United States and the District of Columbia." Available as interactive maps and shapefiles that can be downloaded for use with GIS software.
Data
Create and save maps illustrating over 60 socioeconomic indicators on people, jobs, agriculture and other county data. Sources include the American Community Survey, economic reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the latest Census of Agriculture. You may also download your data into a spreadsheet for use in Excel or other statistical software.
Reference, Visual resource
About.com's collection of printable outline maps of states, countries, continents, regions, etc. Includes links to collections on other Websites.
Visual resource
Digitized historical maps, mainly from the collections of European national libraries.
Data
Create and save maps illustrating 168 indicators on the food environment covering food choices, health and well-being, and community characteristics in U.S. states or counties. Indicators include store/restaurant proximity, food prices, and food and nutrition assistance programs. Data is drawn from numerous sources including the Decennial Census, County Business Patterns, and Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
Data, Full-text
Full text of annual reports (2002 to present) detailing political and civil rights in countries and territories of the world. Includes "ratings of freedom" for each country from 1973 to present. Also includes reports and rankings on freedom of the press in various countries.
Visual resource
A wide variety of digitized maps from the Library of Congress.
Gateway, Visual resource
Gateway to historical maps digitized by some major map libraries in Europe and the U.S.
Visual resource
Over 2000 scanned maps from the University of Texas at Austin, plus links to lots of online maps.
Visual resource
Collections of historical maps, including collections covering North and South America, Africa, and Japan.
