Global Statistical Resources

Since 2010, the United Nations celebrates World Statistics Day every five years on October 20. The last World Statistics Day’s theme was Better Data, Better Lives, which emphasized “the critical role of high-quality official statistical information in analysis and informed policy decision-making in support of sustainable development.” Below we have gathered some links to global statistical resources that could be useful to patrons.

  • United NationsThe United Nations Statistics Division makes available global data related to development, the economy, the environment, population, and more. Its publications include the Statistical Yearbook, the World Statistics Pocketbook, and the Monthly Bulletin of Statistics.
  • UNESCO: The UNESCO Institute of Statistics has a dedicated website for its Data for the Sustainable Development Goals, which covers education and literacy; science, technology, and innovation; culture; and communication and information.
  • WHOThe World Health Organization’s Global Health Observatory has a variety of health statistics on all countries that are members of the organization. It also has data visualizations about several statistical topics.
  • World Bank: The World Bank provides data that can be searched by country or by indicators like agriculture and rural development, aid effectiveness, climate change, economy and growth, education, energy and mining, environment, external debt, financial sector, gender, health, infrastructure, poverty, private sector, public sector, science and technology, social development, social protection and labor, trade, and urban development.
  • Eurostat: The European Union’s statistical office positions itself as “your key to European statistics” and makes news, data, and publications available on its website.
  • U.S. Census Bureau: The United States Census Bureau has compiled a good list of international statistical agencies (in alphabetical order by country) as well as other statistical resources related to censuses, survey activities, and global health resources.
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How Far Should the Library Promote Peaceful and Inclusive Societies for Sustainable Development?

Image from: www.un.org/en/events/peaceday/

By Steve Witt, Head of the International and Area Studies Library; Director of the Center for Global Studies

Last week’s Glocal Notes post featured the coming centenary of the armistice that ended the First World War by telling the story of the destruction and construction of the KU Leuven Library. The Leuven library speaks to the efforts of the library profession to collectively donate books towards efforts to replace what was so tragically lost during the war. Books and libraries played other roles in the war, and librarians served both on the battlefield and in prominent roles aimed at getting collections of books to soldiers.

This begs the question of what librarians were doing to promote the cause for peace before the “Great War”? The UN International Day of Peace on September 21st provides an opportunity to reflect on efforts of librarians and bibliographers to promote peace and work towards ideals that promoted what the UN Declaration of Human Rights now calls the “inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human race” – an idea that to this day remains elusive to both implement socially and instill in the consciousness of people.

In the early 20th century, librarians and bibliographers worked cooperatively to develop international professional networks and practices to both further the profession of librarianship and contribute to human progress. In Belgium, Henri La Fontaine (winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Peace) and collaborator Paul Otlet strove to organize the world’s knowledge as a means to bring about peace. To this end, Otlet created the Universal Decimal Classification System (UDC) and worked to organize all knowledge globally. La Fontaine and Otlet were trying to change the tides towards peace through what they described as “facts” and “institutions.”  La Fontaine asserted that:

“we must oppose facts which are in contradiction with [peace], but especially create institutions which will be the denial of the pretended anarchy existing between the peoples” (1911, p. 1).

The “facts” that La Fontaine sought to share were to bring people “in contact and induce them to enter in relation the ones with the others, notwithstanding the difference of their languages, opinions and races. The facts are the improvements realized by the conscious and unconscious contributions of men of sciences and technics (sic) pertaining to the most various peoples” (p.1). For organization, they worked to create a system by which the “scattered” small groups of specialized organizations could:

“become conscious of the immanent force which is at their disposal. This force we call internationalism: it is the strongest cause of peace” (p. 2).

Image from: www.un.org/en/events/peaceday/

Librarians in the US were working towards similar ends, though often focused on using the public library as a vehicle for social change. Many urban public libraries were active in promoting peace studies and literature through their collections and engaging in what many contemporary librarians may consider Radical Cataloging. For example, in 1908, the Brooklyn Public Library published a 57-page list of books on peace and internationalism, and libraries in Denver, Boston, and Buffalo soon followed suit (Bowerman, 1915). By 1911, George F. Bowerman, Director of the Public Library of the District of Columbia, proposed the use of public, college, and school libraries to further international peace through the collection of books on peace and global affairs (Scott, 1911). The International Association of International Conciliation went so far as to insert cards promoting books and periodicals on the peace movement into the catalogs of American Libraries.

In 1912, the New York Library Club held a meeting on the topic of “The Relations of Libraries to the Peace Movement” (Quieted Germany, 1912, p. 9). Paul Brockett, of the Smithsonian Institution Library, “told of some ways in which librarians and teachers might co-operate to encourage the spread and accessibility of peace literature” (p. 9). The question of the profession’s role in advocating peace continued after the war began in Europe. At the 1915 American Library Association Annual Conference in Berkeley, California, George Bowerman gave a paper titled How Far Should the Library Aid the Peace Movement and Similar Propoganda? Bowerman asked his colleagues what they could do to bring about “peace that shall last” and whether there were “special considerations that may properly affect our attitude towards the peace movement” (Bowerman, 1915, p. 129).

Moving forward 100 years, we still confront many of these same challenges and questions that revolve around peace, justice, and role of our institutions in bringing these ideals into a reality for all humans. As we observe the UN’s International Day of Peace, perhaps it is a good time to reflect on the profession’s history of working towards a sustainable peace and consider ways in which we contribute to the UN’s goal for “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.”

References:

Bowerman, G. (1915). How far should the library aid the peace movement and similar propaganda? Bulletin of the American Library Association, 9(4), 129-133.

La Fontaine, H. (1911). Salus Mundi Suprima Lex. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. New York and Washington Offices. (n.d.). Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. New York and Washington Offices Records, 1910-1954., Volume 35(4078585). Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Archives, Columbia University Libraries.

Quieted Germany. (1912). New York Times, p. 9.

Scott, J. B. (1911, November 6). Letter from J. B. Scott to N. Butler. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. New York and Washington Offices. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. New York and Washington Offices Records, 1910-1954., Volume 78(4078585). Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Archives, Columbia University Libraries.

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Environmental Conflicts in Latin America & the Caribbean

By Claudia Lagos Lira

Contents:

  1. Introduction
  2. Under fire: women, indigenous, and peasants
  3. Natural resources exploitation and colonialism
  4. Mining and more
  5. Further reading and resources
  6. Contact a Librarian

Introduction

Berta Cáceres (44) was a member of the Lenca indigenous group in Honduras. She was a mother, a daughter, a friend, and an environmental rights campaigner internationally awarded for her activism. As a co-founder and leader of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras, Copinh), she led the protest against the Agua Zarca Dam on the Gualcarque River, an hydroelectric project developed by the local company, Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (DESA). Cáceres was murdered in her home in La Esperanza, in March 2016, while supposedly under state protection after receiving several death threats over her opposition to the project.

Intelligence squads in agreement with corporate power are suspected to be responsible for the crime: Several men have been arrested in connection with the murder, “including one serving and two retired military officers,” as court documents revealed, according to an investigation by The Guardian. Among the civilians charged with murder or attempted murder are Roberto David Castillo and Sergio Rodríguez, the executive president of DESA and the manager of environmental and social issues at DESA at the time Cáceres was killed.

Unfortunately, hers is not an isolated case: Nelson García, also a member of Copinh, was murdered two weeks after Cáceres was killed; a few years before, Tomás García, another Lenca indigenous leader and member of Copinh, was shot dead by the Honduran Army as he participated in a peaceful protest. The killings triggered international investors to drop or stop their funding to the Agua Zarca project, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has been investigating human rights violations in the country, denouncing impunity, and recommending the government to take action.

Continue reading

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Celebrating Sub-Saharan Arabic Manuscripts

Introduction 

page of west-African manuscript

This is a page from Professor Stewart’s manuscript collection.

In April, the University Library celebrated the preservation of the Charles Stewart Mauritanian Arabic manuscripts, which is the most extensive collection of Sub-Sahar manuscripts in North America. Prof. Charles served for 35 years in the Department of History, and for half of that time held administrative posts as Director of African Studies, Associate Chair, then Chair of History, Executive Associate Dean in the College of LAS and Interim Associate Provost for International Studies, before his retirement in 2006.

According to Stewart, the collection has 10,000 manuscripts, and it covers topics such as jurisprudence, devotions, science, Quran, history, langaugestics, Sufism, politics, and economics.

The celebration of the collection also had an exhibit that was created by Atyeh (Ati) Ashtari and an online LibGuide created by Lauryn Lehman.

Laila Hussein Moustafa, Assistant Professor, Middle Eastern and North African Studies Librarian

The Exhibition

panels about the west-African Caliphate

Panels about the Caliphate are on display in the IAS Library through mid-May.

“Working on an exhibition to showcase Caliphate of Hamdallahi exposed me to many challenges. In order to create a successful exhibition, you need to come up with highly visually pleasing graphics to make the intended audience interested in the work. However, this particular topic did not have any easily accessible visual materials such as photos, images and manuscripts. Therefore, we had to spend hours digging up the relevant information. Moreover, we had to be very innovative to come up with ways of visualizing the gathered data in a way that is both interesting as a text and much more fascinating as a graphic. This is very well indicated in our poster presenting the challenges of studying the Sokoto Caliphate. We wanted to convey that the two most challenging part of this study was that the material was diffused all over the world and that the data was in many different languages. To visualize these amazing facts, we ended up building layers of graphics on top of a world map to depict such challenges.”

Atyeh Ashtari, Graduate Research Assistant for Urban and Regional Planning

The Online LibGuide

screenshot of library guide about west-african manuscripts

This library guide will be available online soon from the International and Area Studies Library.

This semester, we have been in the process of developing a library guide to aid researchers in locating West African Arabic and Arabic-script resources to use in their research. The initial focus was on finding as many open-access resources as were available, though the scope has expanded outwards to include any relevant resources that could be found. We were able to successfully locate a number of digitization projects that have made resources openly available, as well as an extensive list of physical archives, both domestically and internationally, that researchers may visit. Additionally, we are in the process of creating an interactive map, to further aid in the finding of resources. We look forward to adding new materials as further projects make them available.”

Lauryn Lehman, master’s candidate for African Studies and Library and Information Sciences

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Reviving a Revolution: Exploring Newspapers at the Slavic Research Lab

Zohra Saulat with her poster at BOBCATSSS 2018

By Zohra Saulat

When I decided to pursue librarianship, I did not imagine that it would take me across the world. Just a few short weeks ago I had the opportunity to present one of my projects in Riga, Latvia for the 2018 BOBCATSSS symposium. Not only was this my first ever library conference, but this was the first time I traveled to Europe. The experience itself was exciting, but I was also thrilled to share my project, which had its start on campus at the International and Area Studies Library.

The exhibit about the Russian Revolution was on display in the main library for the month of September 2017.

 

 

This past summer, I assisted with IAS’ Slavic Summer Research Laboratory (SRL). Since 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of Russia’s Revolution, one of my duties to was to help create a banner that would accompany a library exhibit commemorating the historical event. The library exhibit featured memoirs and artifacts from the library’s Slavic collection as well as from the University Archives. My specific task was to survey how historical English language newspapers around the world were reporting on the events of the Russian Revolution. I used both microfilm copies as well as digitized newspapers.

 

Screenshot of a Daily Illini article about a Russian chemist

Using the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections, I started local and looked to see if the Daily Illini was reporting on the Revolution in 1917. I was pleased to find a few articles that featured the Russian Revolution. One was of Illinois faculty member Dr. Simon Litman giving a series of lectures. Another was of a student, who was also a refugee from Russia, as well as a library worker, who also gave a talk on the events of the revolution. Another was a brief feature on a female Russian chemist who was continuing her studies on campus since all universities in Russia were closed at the time of the Revolution.

I further expanded my search to American newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune as well as international newspapers Sunday Times of London, Times of India, and the North China Herald.  It was especially interesting to see how oppressed groups were reporting on this particular Revolution. In all the newspapers I examined,I realized that there seemed to be a lot of information circulating regarding the Russian Revolution. There was indeed a lot of buzz as well as philosophical musings, but I noticed there was also a trend of rectifying supposed misinformation. Take the highlighted Daily Illini newspaper articles as examples. The events on campus were designed to refute certain information and present what the revolution was supposedly really like. This makes sense; In a time of war and political upheaval especially, not only is there information overload, but also misinformation.

Screenshot of a Daily Illini article about Dr. Simon Litman

Newspapers provide a fascinating historical insight. In 2018, whether a news article or a tweet (presidential or personal), a lot of information is found and preserved online. But 100 years ago, newspapers were the go-to for current information. If you are interested, be sure to check out the library guide on using newspapers as primary sources, also listed at the end of this post.

As someone who studied history in undergrad, I naturally enjoyed the nature of this project. But my favorite aspect was seeing its progression: that is,  the process from start to finish, and the collaboration with a variety of experts and specialized departments to put together an exhibit for public consumption. These resources –  whether digitized online or preserved as physical copies – are waiting to see the light of day once again. Libraries contain such valuable information. Often it takes the conscious efforts of a team of librarians and archivists to revive a revolution. I may be a little biased, but libraries truly are remarkable.

Zohra presenting her poster on-stage at BOBCATSSS 2018

Resources:

http://guides.library.illinois.edu/periodicalshttp://guides.library.illinois.edu/periodicals
https://www.library.illinois.edu/hpnl/newspapers/
http://idnc.library.illinois.edu/cgi-bin/illinois?a=cl&cl=CL2&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN——–
http://guides.library.illinois.edu/OrientationtoSRL
http://reeec.illinois.edu/programming-and-events/summer-research-laboratory/srl-application/
https://bobcatsss2018.lu.lv/
https://19172017.weebly.com/

Zohra Saulat
Graduate Assistant | Undergraduate Library
MSLIS Candidate | School of Information Sciences
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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