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Reference Reviews

Péter's Digital Reference Shelf

February 2008

Title: CIA World Factbook
Publisher: CIA
URL: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
Cost: free
Tested: February 18-24, 2008

The Context

This time I provide a somewhat broader context than usual for reasons that will become obvious. Geographic illiteracy is a worldwide problem even in the most developed countries. The National Geographic Society and the Roper Group in 2002 conducted a survey of (or rather a test on) nearly 3,000 young adults (18-24 years old) plus about 300 adults (25-34 years old) in 9 countries (all highly developed economically, except for Mexico). The results were very disappointing, actually they showed a decline from a similar survey in 1998. You don't need to read the 72-page report to get the picture. Looking at the informative summary chart will suffice for mild temporary depression, especially from an American perspective.

Findings of a follow-up survey in 2006 (limited to 500 young adults in the U.S.) were not uplifting either. Half of the subjects could not find New York on a map. 63% of them could not locate Iraq (and Saudi Arabia) on a map, not just any map but the map of the Middle East. We don't know what would have been the hit rate if students had been asked the questions in Esperanto and had made a totally random choice, but I think that the 37% success rate is optimistic.

No wonder that Miss Teen South Carolina had such a hard time answering the question why she thinks that one fifth of Americans cannot locate the U.S. on a world map. If you haven't seen and heard her answer, it is available on YouTube.

Such lack of intellectual beauty particularly irritates reference librarians who would be more than happy to guide pageant participants in their preparations to the atlases section in the library and on the Web. It is not surprising that the Webmasters of the QuietLibrary site have posted the most popular video and its parodies on the Web about the sorry performance of one of the contenders of the Miss U.S.A. title.

Before we rush to judgment about young adults' geographical (and other) literacy, we should not forget that they have more than enough wrong role models for this, especially when listening to some very high-ranking politicians who are paid good money to be geographically and politically educated.

I recall when Jesse Helms from North Carolina, the former Chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, warmly introduced Benazir Bhutto to his fellow senators as the distinguished prime minister of India. True, he looked in the right direction on the atlas, and he was close, but no cigar —especially on such occasion, and especially when the relation between India and Pakistan, and their prime ministers were not the most friendly.

Then again, in 1999 a presidential candidate of the U.S. could not name the then new prime minister of India, the general of Pakistan who just finished overthrowing the democratically elected government, then mistaking Slovenia for Slovakia, referring to the people of Kosovar as Kosovarians instead of just plain Kosovars, and not very graciously to Greeks as Grecians.

Later, as president, he kept up with the rate of gaffes per speech, thanking the Australian prime minister for visiting the Austrian troops in Iraq, then expressing his appreciation to Australia for hosting an OPEC conference which was not that much for the friendly members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, but rather for representatives and distinguished guests of the members of APEC, the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation.

During his African tour, which was just underway as I was working on this review, the press corps accompanying the president must have waited with bated breath and parted lips when somewhat belatedly he commented upon the recognition of Kosovar by the U.S., and added —correctly— that the "Kosovars are now independent".

The Content

The CIA World Factbook in print and in its first Internet incarnation since 1997 was not a very appealing print and online resource, but it kept improving every year, by virtue of adding new statistics, and especially prettying up its once poor maps, making them very functional.

When the results of international test for measuring geographic literacy by the National Geographic Society set off the alarm, several entrepreneurs applied for and received grants to improve geographic literacy.

Most of them just reloaded the then current digital version of the CIA World Factbook (which is legal —within the U.S.— as it is public domain information, then went happily to the bank, then abandoned the project. Many other sites based entirely or partially on the CIA World Factbook received large number of links from individuals and librarians, and they are fresh and vibrant in advertising travel deals. However, their content is absurdly stale in terms of geographic literacy, As this is a very important issue, exceptionally, I start the review with this content feature.

Currency

You really appreciate the comprehensiveness and reasonable currency of the genuine CIA World Factbook only when you go to the CIA site and not to the copycats' site, or the seemingly never updated sites, which can be more harmful than useful with their outdated information. Here a few examples for illustrations.

The URL for the site about Serbia in the World Atlas still carries the 2-character code YU alludes to Yugoslavia, but luckily, the information is more current than this may make one believe it is. But it is not current enough. The editors of World Atlas promised almost two years ago that new maps will be soon created for Serbia and Montenegro to reflect the secession of the latter from the former, which were then recognized as two separate countries. 18 months later, there are no separate maps. The CIA World Factbook, on the other hand, does have a substantial and current country profile about Serbia and another about Montenegro, including very good new maps.

Given the fact that the CIA World Factbook was updated just days before Kosovo's secession, the event is not yet reflected in the online edition. However, considering the frequency of minor updates about twice a month, it is possible that there will be a new entry (if not map) about Kosovo by the time this review is published.

You might say that the developers of the World Atlas site had a growing premonition that Kosovo would also secede from Serbia (as it did when I was working on this review) and it is not worth doing a new map until that happens. I don't think so, but I hope that the secession of Kosovo would to add another huge delay. Of course, the text of Serbia's profile does not reflect the earlier changes either. It claims that "Milosevic stands trial in the Hague" at the International Tribunal for war crimes. He does not stand anything, and so much could not stand the trial that he decided to rather pass away before the verdict is delivered. He managed to do so in 2006, spering likely calamities in Serbia, where the butcher of Belgrade still has a large fan group that demonstrate displeasure in a rather brutal way. This happened these days again when the U.S. joined the decision of most of the countries to recognize Kosovo as a separate country, and this motivated some Serbs to set the U.S. embassy on fire.

Grossly outdated geographic information is a problem even when the content not downloaded from decade old editions of the CIA World Factbook and Library of Congress country studies. Atlapedia is the best example for the disservice of dispensing very stale data about countries while serving garden-fresh ads for travel deals The historical background parts of Atlapedia's country profiles (and much of its country statistics) are at least 15 years old, so you would not know about the genocide in Rwanda, or the decade long massacre of civilians in Liberia in case you wanted to brush up your knowledge about some of the countries on the itinerary of the recent African tour of George W. Bush.

The host of Atlapedia is an Australian company, Latimer Clarke which offers intelligent video solutions. It is not imminently apparent what made the company launch Atlapedia (and what sources it used), but it is eminently apparent that it can't maintain this database. Atlapedia appears in top positions in Web directories and recommended lists of Web sites thanks to many links, including ones from libraries. True, its name is good, appealing and easily distinguishable, but librarians whose link lists steer the users to Atlapedia should know and care better.

Inappropriate links may give also a bad name to otherwise good sites with reasonably current geographic information. The Library of Congress and the CIA have much more current country information than the sites where the wrong links take many users. Take as an example, the site http://www.geographic.org/ countries which appear in many links on the Web, including the top entry in the Google Directory for K-12 students.

This is a link to an old version of the site of an enthusiast who copied (legally) to his site very outdated country profiles of Library of Congress, and 14 years of CIA World Factbook editions which may be good for historic research, but not for ready reference. The most recent one is the 2001 edition, but if you look up the first entry about Afghanistan, in spite of its URL, is not from the old edition of World Factbook, but from the much older country profile of the Library of Congress which ends with the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989.

20 years later and several hundred billions dollar shorter (not to mention the unquantifiable value of the human lives lost and seriously damaged), the post-Soviet changes in the country are not minor events. Just for 2008 the estimated costs (including financial aids) related to Afghanistan is about 164 billion dollars while the country is back to being far the largest opium poppy growing country , dedicating more than eight times as many hectares to this crop then before 2001. LC has much more current country report on Afghanistan from 2006, and this one from the CIA World Factbook 2008 is also incomparably better than the dusty items where searchers are directed. The irony is, that a shorter link —without the /countries part— to http://www.geographic.org would lead to the 2008 edition, because the webmaster keeps updating this site. It is the link that causes the problem.

Data elements

The 2008 edition of the CIA World Factbook released in mid-February, 2008 provides information about nearly 200 countries and territories and close to 100 other geographic entities. It presents the information in a well structured format for each countries and entities. This page provides a comprehensive list of the data elements. The only major category that is poorly covered is health-related information. There are some health-related rates, but that's not enough. I am fully aware of the fact that health issues are not of high priority for the CIA, but they are part of characteristic features of country profiles, and should be selectively included to offer a more informative picture of the countries.

Geographic Information

The country profiles open with a map of the country. They are now an important asset as their rendition is very good. They provide the right amount of information, showing the major cities, rivers, mountains, and the neighboring countries. This is exactly what most users would need to get the picture.

The short introductory part is followed by essential geographic information (location, geographic coordinates, size, land boundaries, coastline, terrain, elevation extremes, proportion of land by type and use, terrain and climates features, natural hazards, most important natural resources, environmental issues, total renewable water resources and freshwater resources). These latter two data elements were introduced in the 2008 edition. Some main data elements are divided into subcategories, such as the size of the land area, water area (if applicable) and the total area. I particularly like the unique area size information that compares the size of a country to the size of the closest U.S. state.

For example, Liberia is slightly larger than Tennessee. This brings home the point better than the sheer number: 111,370 square kilometers (On the other hand, using only metric data is an arguable idea. The U.S. signed the agreement to use the metric system, but for the American audience, it would be really nice to also show measures in miles, and gallons. These are easy to accommodate in both the print and the online version. It caught my eyes that the maritime claims also included in this section are defined in nautical miles, and not nautical kilometers).

It is also listed in this section what international agreements the country participates in, or were at least signed but not yet ratified. Sometimes this section is a tad excessive, as no one is likely to loose much sleep if for a landlocked country, like Hungary information is not available about its participation in international agreements about whaling, and if yes, whether such agreements were ratified by the parliament or just signed by the president of the country.

Human Geography

The human geography section provides the details about the population, and the most vital statistics about the people of the country: the median age, life expectancy at birth, fertility rate, birth rate, death rate, population growth rate, infant mortality rate, net migration rate, gender ratio by age groups, various HIV/AIDS rates, prevalence of major infectious diseases, the literacy rate and the distribution of the population by nationality, ethnic, religious and language, often good clues for the reasons of conflicts. These data elements are not available for all the countries. For example, among my test countries, there was no information about the population growth rate, birth rate, and death rate for Serbia. More such indexes should be added to the country profiles (especially the composite Human Development Index for the population geography) as they are informative, even though controversial as any kind of index. I come back to the index issue in the section on software.

Government

The section on government has many useful sub-sections that are often the subject of ready reference questions, such as the types of government, about the variety of names of countries in short and long formats, type of government, legal system, dependency status, participation in international organization, diplomatic representations, etc.) in a well structured compact format. Even the parts on executive, legislative and judicial branch are presented in an easy to scan layout, but the list of political parties and their leaders is excessive, the top 5-6 largest parties would more than suffice for most users. Their original and translated names thickens the infoglut.

Economy

The economy part is very good (but see my reservation about the content at the end of this section). Beyond the usual indicators it also has the Gini-index, although only for 130 of the countries. It is a single number measure for family income inequity in a country. Even without knowing all the details that goes into the calculation, it is simple to grasp its meaning: the higher the value the larger the degree of inequality in the distribution of family income.

A Gini index of 45 is considered to be the line of division between equal and unequal countries. Most of the Gini indexes confirm in a quantifiable and comparable way what has been usually verbalized: Sweden has the lowest (23), and Namibia the highest (70.7) Gini index. The source data are not the same for all countries, and that contribute to some surprising Gini index, such as the too good to be true index for Nigeria (43.7), or Ethiopia (30) which are believed to have a higher degree of inequity than the index values suggest. Incorporating or linking to the innovative and informative corruption perceptions rank of the countries (created by Transparency International could be very useful in this category.

One number that seemed unrealistic in my test countries was the yearly revenue of $269 million of Afghanistan (on an exchange rate basis, not in purchasing power parity terms). The notes say that the country also received $273 million and $63 million from two American funds. Even with these it is only $605 million —for a country with about 30 million people (more than 32 million according to the CIA World Factbook). This just does not add up to me. Afghanistan got more than that from the U.S. alone in aid in any of the past four years, and the yearly contributions from the other countries that pledged a total of $8.2. billion fund for the reconstruction of Afghanistan for 2004-2007 should also appear in this budget line.

Communication and transportation

Thee sections have the usual common indicators and a few relatively new ones. The number of cars per 1,000 people is not available, even though in most countries it is a telling number in more ways than one. This is the section where the statistics about the Internet (and the potential for communication with the outside world) are more and more encouraging every year. Both sections would be enriched by comparative data, i.e. by showing growth in the number of Internet and cell phone users (certainly indicators of less Draconian countries than North Korea), the extension of paved roadways, and similar measures in the past few year.

Military

As for military information, beyond the absolute numbers, the ratios would be as much interesting. The ratio of military expenditures of the Gross Domestic Product is given, but it would give a more well-rounded picture to show its ratio along with the ratio of educational and health expenditures by the government.

The transnational issues include a wide variety of topics ranging from territorial and maritime disputes to illegal migration and commerce, to narco- and human trafficking. About 80% of the countries have one or more issues to tackle, and China wins with the most number of issues, including building of dams that have devastating effects way beyond its borders. The disputes about Kashmir remain the evergreen problems between India, Pakistan and China, with the largest number of military per square inch (or square centimeters).

The Appendixes for —among others— abbreviations, international organizations and groups, essential international environmental agreements, cross references to geographic names, and weight and measures, are useful.

The Software

The software essentially consists of a browser, it does not offer a search engine, so you can't easily find the countries where death penalty exists, or uranium is a significant natural resource. You can look them up through the backdoor, by using Google or Yahoo as a proxy, but it is not of the same precision and recall as if it were through a search engine built in the CIA World Factbook itself. The lack of search engine is surprising because the data have been organized from the beginning into clearly delineated data groups. Actually there are not only data field but also data subfields, such as many of the demographics data which is given as a total along with distribution by gender, almost begging for, say a birth rate field with ˆatotal ˆbˆfemale and ˆcmale subfields.

It may not be obvious but the country profiles can be browsed not only by country names but by many data elements, which could compensate for the lack of search engines. This extra browsing feature is a great asset, but it is somewhat hidden, and most users would probably do not spot it. From the country profiles there is a link through a symbol labeled as field-listing. It is actually an index of that data element. For many of them the index looks like the typical browsable index of author, journal, and company names, SIC and NAICS codes, and similar indexes in traditional indexing/abstracting, full-text and directory databases.

I find these indexes very useful for ready references, e.g. when one wants to scan the types of government assigned to countries (gov-type-1) and scroll quickly up and down in the alphabetic country list which are compact enough for some of the data elements which have short entries, such as GDP per capita. But even within those compact indexes, the smooth scrolling may be spoiled by excessive notes, as is the case with government type for the geographic area, Antarctica.

In case of many other data elements, the fields are too lengthy and their index looks like as if an entry were created from the entire abstract of a bibliographic record. To a lesser extent the same applies to the long and short, current and former names of countries, somewhat similar to journal names indexes, which show former, successor, parallel, split into, merged from titles in the journal name index.

With that said, it is obvious that with relatively small changes in tagging and subfield indexing the data elements could be used to create more refined indexes. These, in turn, could be used for field-specific searches through a built-in search engine. This would make it possible to search for countries where, say, the rate of adherents of Islam is larger than 70%.

Another content enhancement would make such searching very desirable. For many data elements the absolute numbers are not nearly as useful as the relative numbers. This is natural for such data as literacy, birth, and death rates, and indeed, they appear as rates. But many other data elements would also justify this (while keeping the absolute numbers as well). Per capita or per thousands rates as measures would be very useful for many economic and communications data, such as oil, natural gas, and electricity production and consumptions, landline and cellular phones in use, or percentage of population, such as for Internet users.

For a few data elements there are also rank lists where the countries are listed not alphabetically but by the value of the data element. Once again, relative and absolute numbers would be very useful for these, and some other data elements which are of great interest, such as the rank of a country by literacy, or by the Gini index. Many of the the lists can be scraped off the screen and imported into a spreadsheet then re-sorted, but a direct export button would be more convenient.

The CIA World Factbook is not the alpha and the omega for country information (and misses a few essential health indicators), but it keeps improving and being enhanced with new data elements, if not by new concepts, such as creating pre-defined subset groups for countries with certain common features, such as ASEAN countries, Francophone countries, orsub-Saharan countries. It is a good ready reference resource and could be quickly enhanced by links to data elements used in databases created by UN agencies and other non-profit international organizations which have unique and useful data, such as the human development index of UNDP. Links to other databases for corroborating values provided by the CIA also would be welcome.