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May 2015 Vol. 52 No. 9

[Visited Feb'15]  How many tourists visit Thailand each year? What are the principal exports of Kenya?  What is the standard of living in Azerbaijan?  How many Arabs live in Israel?  ProQuest's Statistical Abstracts of the World answers these questions and thousands more in an impressive compilation of national statistical information hosted on the publisher's user-friendly Statistical Insight platform.  Modeled on the ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States (CH, Jun'13, 50-5330), the database gives access to country-level data, largely compiled by official statistical offices, for 55 countries (as of 2015), plus data gleaned from Eurostat (CH, Nov'10, 48-1190), the United Nations's current and historical Demographic Yearbook (CH Mar-06, 38-4798), and the World Bank's World Development Indicators (CH, Nov'12, 50-1248).  Both developed and developing countries are included.

Data is organized by country, and by selecting a particular country the user is presented with a table of contents of sections covering geography, population, vital statistics, economy, business, labor, industry, agriculture, housing, transportation, environment, national accounts, prices, external trade, and much more.  The depth of coverage varies by the nation's size, wealth, and stage of development.  Full sections may be downloaded as PDF files; data tables can be exported into Excel.  Table headings in foreign languages are translated.  All data is fully identified with sample citations in APA and MLA formats.  Durable URLs link directly to the tables.  Data may be filtered by many facets including geography, sources, demographics, or subjects.  A date slider shows the current range and permits selecting specific time periods.  Searching is simple, with all of the terms in tables, titles, data sources, content notes, and indexes fully searchable.  Search results can be sorted by any chosen facet.  There is an excellent, detailed user guide using the familiar LibGuides Community (CH, Sep'13, 51-0007) framework, which covers browsing, searching, search help, viewing tables, emailing, printing and saving, and scheduled webinars.  ProQuest plans to cover 65 countries by 2016, and the total could top 100 in 2017.  Suitable for all types of libraries and researchers requiring broad coverage of country data.

--P. Z. McKay, University of Florida

Summing Up: Recommended. All readership levels.