The United Nations Population Fund supports and monitors projects and programmes on population and development around the world. From these projects come important publications, full of discussion and data about health, reproduction, demographics and population, as well as research into them. This body of material deserves a wider audience than just specialists, and it is for them that this CD‐ROM with flexible search facilities and 115 full‐text searchable documents has been produced. Its current preview is free of charge and is intended to indicate the range and relevance of this electronic archive. It samples UNFPA project work between 1993 and 1999, and promises to be the start of an ongoing archive, depending on user feedback.
The CD‐ROM uses Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 as its point‐and‐click interface to search and display documents. Installation is quick and easy. System requirements for Windows are: i486 or Pentium processor‐based PC, and, typically, 10MB of available RAM on Windows 95 or Windows NT, and 10MB of hard disk space; for Mac, Apple Power Macintosh or compatible, Mac OS software version 7.1.2 or later, 4.5MB of RAM, and 8MB of hard disk space. Search procedures are clear and easy to follow; main menu options include document title, publication type, organisations, government, subject, region, country, conferences, UNFPA project number and a full‐text search. These allow one quickly to locate items, say, on birth control or Bhutan, and reports on topics like family planning research in Jordan, or strategy development reports on Egypt or Peru.
Full‐text searches allow word stemming, sounds‐like, and thesaurus options, and lead to full reports that can be magnified on‐screen for easy reading. PDF quality is good. Bookmarks enable pinpointing of document sections like methodology, key findings, or appendices, while datacard abstracts provide at‐a‐glance summaries. There are English, French and Spanish versions for instructions on how to use the CD‐ROM, not the content itself. Documents are mainly in English, though some have titles in Spanish. This preview CD‐ROM will make the material available to a wider audience, including organisations, researchers, the general public, and promises to develop into a valuable resource for students and specialists investigating population and development issues. It is well worth trying out for yourself.
