World Development Indicators was developed to measure and monitor progress toward internationally‐adopted development targets. WDI Online, the latest version of this statistical publication, consists of a Web‐accessible database of development data with 575 indicators for 208 countries and 18 regional and income groups for the period 1960 to 2001. Indicators cover demographic, financial, social, health and environmental topics and will interest researchers and students in disciplines such as economics, business, government, development, public policy and public health.
There are gaps in the data coverage, with not all indicators available for all years, countries or regions, as the World Bank does not collect any data itself but relies on data reported by individual countries. This also results in a two‐year lag between data collection and data publication. However, while more current data may be available from country statistical agencies and more comprehensive data on individual topics may be available from other international agencies (e.g. World Health Organization through the WHOSIS system at www3.who.int/whosis/menu.cfm?path=whosis&language=English), there is no other publication that provides such comprehensive data over time. –
WDI Online uses a simple and elegant tabbed format. Users can move from screen to screen, selecting single or multiple countries or regions, indicators, and desired years of data, and then viewing the results in table or graph format. Users can jump between tabs to alter some selections without affecting others. Countries and regions are organized alphabetically, by political or economic groupings (such as the European Union or OECD) or World Bank‐defined groups or regions based on geography, income, indebtedness or state of development. Indicators are presented alphabetically or by subject. A search feature is provided for the indicators, but this only searches the actual words in the name of the indicator. Thus a search on the term “education” did not retrieve the indicators for expenditure per student as a percentage of GDP, as the term did not appear in the indicator title.
There are many viewing options for the data. Data can be presented by indicator or region, facilitating comparison or the creation of country or regional profiles. The results can be presented in actual units, thousands, millions or billions up to three decimal places, and can be expressed in raw numbers or as a percentage change. A single year can be selected as an index year, and data for other years is recalculated based on the selected index year. Data can also be displayed in a simple line graph. The data can be saved either as a Microsoft Excel or ASCII delimited file, facilitating more sophisticated data analysis. Links to definitions, sources and footnotes, so important in any statistical product or publication, are easily accessed from the data display page.
An alternative for libraries whose users do not require the complete set of indicators, or the long time‐series data available in WDI Online, is Data Query (http://devdata.worldbank.org/data‐query/), a free subset of WDI Online. This offers 54 indicators for 208 countries and 18 groups for five years (1997 to 2001). Data Query offers all the display and export functionality of the full WDI database. Those wanting quick reference tables by country, region or topic can find them on the World Bank’s Data and Statistics site (www.worldbank.org/data/), along with a mapping tool for displaying current data. Power users, on the other hand, may prefer the World Development Indicators CD‐ROM ($275 for single user, or $550 for multiple users). This offers all the data display capabilities of the online system, plus it allows users to search for countries meeting certain criteria and provides additional export formats including DBASE and SAS. The CD‐ROM also has data mapping capabilities for historical data not available through WDI Online, and it includes the text of the print volumes of World Development Indicators and World Bank Atlas.
All in all, WDI Online offers unique content from a very easy to use interface. However, the version of World Development Indicators best suited to individual libraries will depend on the number of anticipated users and their specific needs for data retrieval and export.
