Country Reports

Citation

Axford, M.A. (2002), "Country Reports", Online Information Review, Vol. 26 No. 6, pp. 432-433. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2002.26.6.432.11

Country Reports is a site with information on countries around the world. Designed for primary school students, it presents information on more than 275 entities, not all of which are countries. Each ocean is listed, for example, as are some uninhabited islands.

The top page opens with the name of the site and the phrase “Eradicate conflict by building cultural awareness”. Below is a graphic of a map with the functional areas to the right of the graphic. First is a pull‐down menu with “Select a country” and a “go” button underneath. Underneath are links to main sections of the site: world countries, current weather, country flags, national anthems, online discussion, and online store. Beneath these is a search engine for the site and a link to the site, “Best on the Web for teachers”. The next box below gives quotes from reviews and copyright information.

Selecting a country takes users to a page with the country’s flag and name. The box below links to main sections of the article about the country. There is a map on the right side of the page. Below the links is another search box, followed by weather information for the capital city. Below the map for some countries are links to news stories provided by Moreover.com Clicking on any of the links to sections of the article takes users to the top of the article rather than to that specific section of it. The same is true of the navigational links at the top of the article.

Major areas of information about each country include an introduction, geography, people, government, economy, communications, transport, military, and transnational issues (such as international disputes). A good deal of statistical, political, economic, and demographic information falls into one of these categories. Included is information on climate, current environmental issues and international agreements, population, branches of government, political parties, international organization participation, GDP, labor force, electricity, products, imports and exports, telephones, radio, transportation systems, military manpower and expenditures, and more. There is a link on most pages to “source material”. The major content comes from the CIA World Factbook and Library of Congress country studies.

The flag section provides a pull‐down menu of countries, which researchers can use to view a country’s flag. The graphics are the size of thumbnails, but unfortunately they do not connect to a larger picture. Users can, however, link to a site from which to buy a flag. The anthem section has the anthem in QuickTime format, an English version of the lyrics, and the lyrics in its native language (non‐Roman alphabets are transliterated).

The design of the site is simple and clean. The implementation of that nice design is lacking, however. Not every page has a link to the home page, for example. The non‐functioning links mentioned above are another problem. The information is from reliable sources generally available on the Web, but Country Reports formats it well. In all, Country Reports is an adequate source of information on the countries of the world.

This review was first published in Reference Reviews Volume 16 Number 6 2002.