University Library > Guides > Countries

Selected Resources for Research on Countries

Table Contents:
General Specific Countries Periodical Indexes Internet Resources

General

The sources listed below provide brief entries emphasizing statistical and factual information. Call numbers for books in the Reference Collection start with "Ref." Books held at the Reference Desk are marked (Ref Desk).

  • General encyclopedias such as Britannica , Americana , and World Book are in the As of the Reference Collection. Some, such as Encyclopedia Britannica UW-W users only and Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia UW-W users only are available from the library’s eBooks webpage and the Alphabetical List of Databases.
  • Almanacs and Yearbooks - World Almanac and Universal Almanac (Ref Desk) - short articles on individual countries, numerous worldwide statistical tables.
  • World Factbook - produced yearly by the CIA. (Ref Desk) and online World Factbook.
  • Statesman's Year-Book (Ref JA51 .S1) and the International Year Book and Statesman's Who's Who (Ref JA51 .I57) - brief overview of each country, some duplication but both may be useful.
  • Europa World Year Book (Ref Desk) - brief essays cover history, economics, government, etc. Many statistical tables.
  • Regional sources such as Africa South of the Sahara (Ref DT351 .A57) and Latin American History and Culture (Ref F1406 .E53) have more detailed and complete information.
  • United Nations publications such as the Demographic Yearbook (Ref HA17 .D45), International Trade Statistics Yearbook (Ref HF91 .U473) and Statistical Yearbook (Ref HA12.5 .U63) provide valuable world wide statistics in their areas of coverage.
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Specific Countries

These are sources focus on only one country, and contain more information than is found in the general sources listed above.

  • The University Library Catalog has entries for books about individual countries that may be found with short searches.
    • Encyclopedias for a single country, such as the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan (Ref DS805 K633)
      Look for encyclopedias and dictionaries by doing a keyword search in the Catalog, for example:
      japan and (dictionar? or encycloped?)
    • Series of historical dictionaries which give detailed information on individual countries, such as the Historical Dictionary of XXX (Ref DT541.5 .D4).Look for this series by doing a title search in the Catalog for:
      historical dictionary of
    • Materials that focus on a particular country, such as Agricultural Development in Kenya Since 1967
      Look for them by doing a subject search in the Catalog for the name of the country, for example:
      benin
  • Country Studies Country Studies/Area Handbooks and (U.S. Documents Stacks D 101.22:550-). This is a series of books on select individual countries published by the Library of Congress for a program sponsored the Department of the Army . Not all titles are in the Catalog so you may need to browse the stacks. Warning: Many of the handbooks are badly out of date, so look for the publication date.
    • Country Profiles - this series of country profiles is part of the Country Studies Program, and provides briefer, more up-to-date information about select countries.
  • Publications of the U.S. State Department e.g.,
    • Background Notes and (U.S. Documents S 1.123):
    • Post Reports and (U.S. Documents S 1.127).
    • Other Federal documents can be found using the Catalog or government documents CD-ROM and by clicking on the Government link in the Internet Resources section of this guide.
  • OECD Economic Surveys (International Documents OECD 10-) -for individual members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. This group is comprised of free-market countries.
  • Pamphlet Collection materials. Pamphlets on individual countries are located in the pamphlet file cabinets. The quality and quantity of information varies widely but material for some countries is excellent.
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Periodical Databases

Databases help find articles in scholarly journals and popular magazines.

  • ABI/Inform Global UW-W users only (ProQuest) indexes over 3000 journals relating to business. Full text articles are available from over 2000 of the journals covered.
  • Academic Search Premier UW-W users only (EBSCOhost ) a broad-based index to over 3,000 journals with fulltext articles from over 1,000.
  • Lexis-Nexis Academic UW-W users only. Using the Easy Search (default), choose types of publications and years to search. Contains articles from major United States and world newspapers and magazines.
  • ProQuest Newspapers UW-W users only indexes articles in several major United States newspapers and several Wisconsin newspapers. Includes many full text articles online, others may be linked to online, or found in print in the library. The University Library has back issues of the The New York Times , Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, and Chicago Tribune.

Internet Resources

  • One way to start finding information about various countries is by "Internet Resources" from the Find menu on any library webpage. Choose Government then follow the path Internet Publications/Country Information or select Social Sciences/International Studies .
  • Information about environmental problems and issues in specific countries is available at UNEP.NetEnvironment Network
  • Information on the Internet may using specialized internet search engines or directories such as the Yahoo! list of Countries links, and the Librarians Internet Index. Useful information may also be available from commercial travel sites such as Lonely Planet; choose the World guide option and then select your country.
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For assistance, contact a reference librarian at (262) 472-1032, by email or chat or in person at the Library's Reference Desk.

Last Revised: MS - 10/8/2007