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 a few intergovernmental and nongovernmental e-resources that are available to the Stanford community. See also: Rediscovering and Mining Digital Government Information and Data and Statistical E-Resources in this issue.
All these databases are available via the Stanford Libraries' databases page.
Policy Archive
The Policy Archive, a joint effort between the Center for Governmental Studies and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis Library, is a digital archive of global, non-partisan public policy research containing over 27,000 documents on topics from banking and business to human rights, trade and transportation.
This digital archive collects and disseminates summaries and full text, videos, reports, briefs, and multimedia material of think tank-, university-, government-, and foundation-funded policy research. It offers a subject index, an internal search engine, abstracts, email notifications of newly added research, and will soon expand to offer information on researchers and funders, and even user-generated publication reviews. Perhaps most interestingly, researchers can quickly and easily upload to the archive their own publications as well as supplemental files such as press releases, charts, or data sets, giving broader access to key research and policy analysis to other researchers, communities and the public.
Intergovernmental and Non-Governmental Organizations' Search Engines
The IGO/NGO search engines are two Google custom search engines (GSE) created by James Jacobs. (For more information about GSE, see here.) These search engines are useful for those doing research on topics of interest to Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). We've separated IGOs from NGOs to make for more focused search results.
The IGO Search searches across hundreds of IGO Web sites, enabling users to research topics such as human rights, development, environment, education, HIV/AIDS and health from IGOs like the United Nations, World Bank, UN Development Program (UNDP), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), European Union, Organization of American States, the Asian Development Bank and many others.
The NGO search indexes local, regional and international NGOs from sources as diverse as AARP, Earth Watch Institute, International Crisis Group, OXFAM, and the World Agricultural Forum. In conjunction, these two search engines will be useful for researchers across the public policy spectrum.
Please contact James Jacobs (jrjacobs@stanford.edu) for questions, reference needs, comments or collection suggestions.
