Foreign Government Information

Strategies for locating foreign government 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 (non-U.S.) governments and other background information on a country. None of these strategies alone will yield a comprehensive list of sites. Rather, to do a "complete" search, a combination of several or all of 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 those links, the other government links most likely will be in the home country's native language.

Here are some good Web sites with comprehensive lists of U.S.-based diplomatic missions and information services:

• Project Visa "Visa and embassy information for all countries"

• 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 the 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 Studies [The Ohio State University Libraries]

  • 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

  • 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]

  • European Union Center of Excellence : European Studies Center [University of Pittsburgh, University Center for International Studies]

• Indigenous Studies/Fourth World

  • Aboriginal Studies [WWW Virtual Library]

  • Center for World Indigenous Studies

    • Fourth World Documentation Program

• Latin America

  • Latin American Studies Association

  • lanic : Latin American Network Information Center

• The Middle East

  • Middle East & Islamic Studies Studies [Columbia University Libraries]

  • Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law [University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies]

Strategy 3: Use a geographically-arranged list 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 arrangements of Internet information.

• Virtual Tourist

Strategy 4: Use a Subject approach

You could also use one of the major search engines [Google,  Excite, Altavista] 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 the sites you identify are "reputable" sources and that you understand what political bias might be promoted.

For an extensive listing of search engines, try AllSearchEngines.com.

The following Web sites contain lists of links to foreign governments and their divisions, as well as international and regional agencies and organizations.

• Government Information on the Internet : A Primer [IFLA: International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions] includes search strategies for:

  • National Governments
  • Multi-National Organizations
  • Treaties, Constitutions, and Legal Resources
  • Statistics
  • News Sources

• IGO (intergovernmental organizations) Web Search [Northwestern University Library]

• International Affairs Resources [The WWW Virtual Library]

• International Organizations and Related Information [University of Michigan Library, Documents Center]

• Governments on the WWW
  note: last changed in 2002, so not all links will work, however, learning that an institution in one country is called a "Ministry" and in another country an "Office" can be helpful when searching Google for the current (if any) Web site.