Over the past several years, much headway has been made on digital access to government information, making it much easier for Stanford faculty, students, researchers and staff to gain access to this rich information environment.
Below are some new data and statistical e-resources that are available to the Stanford community. See also: Rediscovering and Mining Digital Government Information and Intergovernmental and Nongovernmental Digital Resources in this issue.
All these databases are available via the Stanford Libraries' databases page.
OECD.stat
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) was founded in 1948 to help administer the Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Europe after World War II. Since then, it has been one of the primary organizations for researchers and students to gain access to comparable economic and development data and statistics at the country level in subject areas like GDP, unemployment, income, population, labor, education, trade, finance etc. OECD publications and statistics have long been available digitally via SourceOECD (also at the Stanford Libraries databases page) but now OECD has created OECD.stat, an easy to use interface to access all of their statistics in one interface. OECD.Stat includes data and metadata for 30 OECD member countries and approximately 50 non-member countries. Data can be exported in Excel or .CSV formats. Coverage is generally 2000 - present. For earlier OECD statistics, researchers should consult SourceOECD.
Data.gov
Data.gov, Launched on May 21, 2009, is part of the Obama administration's government transparency initiative. Data.gov provides access to Federal datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Data.gov offers data in three ways: through the "raw" data catalog, using tools and through the geodata catalog. The "Raw" Data Catalog provides an instant download of datasets while the Tools Catalog provides hyperlinks to tools that allow users to mine datasets. Data comes from over 100 Federal agencies. Data coverage is not historical, but over time more data sets from a variety of Federal agencies will become available. Users are encouraged to suggest other datasets.
UNdata
Since 2005, the United Nations has offered free access to global statistics from across the UN system. UNdata allows users to search and download statistical time series for countries from around the world covering a wide range of economic and socio-demographic topics. Includes Indicator databases (Key Global Indicators, Millennium Development Goals, Gender Info, Indicators on Women and Men, The State of the Worlds Children 2008, ECE Database), UNESCO UIS Data, ILO Data, Energy Statistics, Greenhouse Gas Inventory, FAO Data, WHO Data, Human Development Report, Industrial Commodity Statistics, ITU Data, Official Country Data, Estimates of Main Aggregates, Demographic Statistics, World Population Prospects, UNHCR Statistical Yearbook, Commodity Trade Statistics, and UNWTO Data, with more databases to be added.
Note: Statistics from the UN go back to 1946 (and earlier if League of Nations is considered). For historical statistics, please consult the Statistical Yearbook of the United Nations, which is located in the Social Sciences Resource Center of Green Library.
China Data Online
China Data Online, published by the University of Michigan's China Data Center, is a database of economic-, industrial- and demographic statistics at the national, provincial, city and county levels. The site also includes statistical yearbooks, census data, industrial and marketing surveys and an atlas of China. Features include the "Statistics on Map" tool (located on the side menu) to compare data for geographic areas side by side. Coverage varies:
- Yearly Macro-economy Statistics (1949 -)
- Monthly Macro-economic Statistics (1998 - )
- Monthly Reports on Economic Development (2002 - )
- City Statistics (1996 - )
- County Statistics (1997 - )
- Industrial Statistics (2001 - )
- Various statistical yearbooks (2002 - )
Please contact James Jacobs (jrjacobs@stanford.edu) for questions, reference needs, comments or collection suggestions.
