Strategies for locating more information
The nature of the Internet makes it nearly impossible to maintain a comprehensive set of links to all foreign government information. Below are suggested strategies for locating information from foreign (i.e. non-U.S.) governments and other background information on a country not found on our list. None of these strategies alone will yield a comprehensive list of sites. Rather, to do a "complete" search, a combination of several or all the strategies is recommended.
Strategy 1
Use "diplomatic" links as a jumping off point for locating many government Internet sites.
Diplomatic and information services Web sites have a number of advantages when trying to locate foreign government information:
- The pages are designed to convey a country's political or business stance to the public. Therefore, the sites generally concentrate on up-to-date information designed for a general audience. You are likely to find more "policy briefs" than in-depth studies of issues.
- Many diplomatic missions attempt either to keep a comprehensive list of government Internet sites in their home country or to serve as the main jump-off points from their home governments. Even if the only link is to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the home country, you will often pick up the trail to other government Internet sites from the ministry pages.
- Pages for links to U.S.-based embassies, consulates, and information offices will be in English. Be aware that once you leave the U.S. link, the other government links most likely will be in the home country's native language.
Here are some good homepages with comprehensive lists of U.S.-based diplomatic missions and information services.
- Project Visa - "Visa and embassy information"
- embassy.org - "a resource of and for the Washington, D.C. foreign embassy community"
- EmbassyWorld.com - "designed to provide a comprehensive list of contact resources for all of the world's diplomatic offices"
- Permanent Missions to the United Nations - New York contact information
Strategy 2
Use an "area studies" page link.These pages fall into two groups: those that are part of the WWW Virtual Library (a hierarchical "subject" arrangement of Internet sites) and those that are developed by academic and research institutions with serious interests in a region and regional issues. The advantages of this approach are:
- They generally pull together a wide variety of Internet sources, including major government links, related to their area research interests.
- Those pages developed by academic and research institutions may list their own research studies -- or better still, provide full text of some studies.
- The WWW Virtual Library pages are among the most comprehensive sets of links available and are regularly updated.
- Most of these pages are in English
Here are a few of the area studies pages available on the Internet. These should lead you to others.
- The WWW Virtual Library
- Africa
- African Studies (Columbia University Libraries)
- Africa South of the Sahara (Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources)
- Asia
- Internet Guide for Chinese Studies (Sinological Institute, Leiden University, Netherlands)
- Asian Studies WWW Virtual Library (The Australian National University)
- Asian Studies (WWW Virtual Library)
- Asian Studies - Asian Continent Information Resources (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
- East Asian Libraries Cooperative World-Wide Web (The Ohio State University)
- sarai : South Asia Resource Access on the Internet (Columbia University Libraries, South & Southeast Asian Studies)
- Tibetan Studies WWW Virtual Library
- Vietnam WWW Virtual Library
- Australia/The Pacific
- ANZSANA : Australian & New Zealand Studies Association of North America
- Australian Studies Centre (University of Queensland)
- Pacific Studies WWW Virtual Library (The Australian National University)
- Indonesia WWW Virtual Library (Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University)
- Papua New Guinea WWW Virtual Library
- Europe
- Russian & East European Studies (University of Pittsburgh, University Center for International Studies)
- West European Studies WWW Virtual Library (University of Pittsburgh Center for West European Studies)
- Indigenous Studies/Fourth World
- Latin America
- The Middle East
- Middle East & Jewish Studies Studies (Columbia University Libraries)
- MENIC : Middle East Network Information Center (The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin)
- CIMEL : Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law part of the WWW Virtual Library
Strategy 3
Use a geographically arranged lists of sites.These are often the most complete listing of Internet sites in a country, but generally do not differentiate between government and non-government sites in the country. Also site names are likely to be in the country's native language.Here are some geographically-based lists:
- Yahoo! : National Governments : Countries - the oldest and still one of the best hierarchical arrangement of Internet information.
- Virtual Tourist
Strategy 4
Use a Subject approachYou could also use one of the major search engines to locate information on your topic. If you choose subject searching, keep in mind these principles:
- Do not assume that the pages will be in English. To thoroughly search you must use both English words and words in the country's native language. For example:to search for statistics from a Spanish-speaking country do the search once with "statistics" and then a second time with "estadisticas". Also consider alternative spellings of English words such as "organization" and "organisation".
- Be prepared to sift through a lot of non-governmental materials before you reach the government materials.
- Be an intelligent information consumer. You are likely to find a lot of questionable information as well as many useful sites. Be sure that sites you identify are "reputable" sources and that you understand what political bias might be promoted.
Here are a couple of good search engines for a subject approach:
- Altavista - one of the best for international material since it has a translation feature. You will get very good results IF you take the time to read their help screens. If you don't, your results will be very poor ( you will either get nothing at all or far too many hits). This site also can do translations from German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Italian on the fly.
- Excite -- another good search engine.
- Google -- a very user friendly site
- For an extensive listing of search engines, try AllSearchEngines.com.
(e-reference)