OECD's iLibrary Session

The OECD is an intergovernmental organization devoted to enhancing economic cooperation and the promotion of democracy created in 1961 out of the Marshall plan. The organization publishes a huge amount of research and data available to uncg researchers and students through OECD ilibrary. We have had (and almost lost) SourceOECD, but this new product is ten times better.

Here are some notes from the session today. If you want to talk through anything, just ask. I love the OECD.

• A list of OECD member countries is available here. Accession candidate countries are ones that want to be members of the OECD. Enhanced engagement countries are ones that won't join but take active role; Brazil and South Africa may become candidates for accession.
• On the main OECD ilibrary, which went live yesterday, you can look up information by theme or country. This includes themes like Education and Health that people may not associate with the OECD.
• We will be getting Marc records for the tons of books in iLibrary, hopefully by December. If someone asks for a book published by the OECD, be sure the check iLibrary too!
• Database includes book, journal/papers, working papers (which are unofficial reports by researchers associated with the OECD), the well-known fact books, and, your favorite, STATISTICS!
• Pretty much everything seems to have an RSS feed now, which is really cool. You could do a RSS for a journal, a statistical indicator, latest releases in a particular theme, pretty much whatevs. They also provide citations for each individual piece.
• OECD.stat within iLibrary is the statistical warehouse. It provides access to wide range of OECD data sets from economic indicators to health issues stats. Metadata are available for all datasets and provide source information. Keep in mind that OECD's role is to aggregate and harmonize data, so they are getting most of it from the country's source agency.
• And speaking of health, OECD Health Data 2010 is out and is still quite comprehensive. It is linked on the front page and no longer requires downloading an application.

Those were the highlights. I encourage you to use this source for any international or comparative work with a social focus. Great stuff!