Established in 1997, CountryReports provides an online source for cultural, historical and statistical information about 239 countries at the time of this review. Users may navigate to country reports by alphabetical links or by using an interactive flash map to visually navigate to specific nations. The site also allows basic keyword searching of its 35,000 pages of content through a Google custom search engine.
Each country report includes a main facts page listing a nation's capital, population, total area, gross domestic product in US dollars, and main currency. This page also links to summaries of popular foods and recipes, and rules of dining etiquette, as well as official and commonly‐used languages, and expressions of greeting. Brief descriptions of family life, social customs, and clothing fashions are also linked from the Facts page, as is a single page collection of brief historical, geographic, and cultural facts.
The left‐side menus of each country report link to more detailed information on a variety of topics. A major section in these menus is directed to a country's customs and culture including descriptions of children's life, social and religious activities, sports and recreation pastimes, and national holidays. Each nation's history is summarized on separate pages in narrative form and as a timeline. Geographic, economic and demographic data are also available with some interactive features, such as the option to compare life expectancies among different countries. Each country report also lists key officials and governing bodies, political parties, and diplomatic representatives to and from the US. Reports are supplemented with a photo gallery featuring images of cultural, geographical, and historical interest.
CountryReports features an Activities section, which may be of interest to PK‐12 educators. As in the individual reports, this section allows visual and statistical comparisons of countries on a wide range of demographic, economic, and geographic factors. This section also features interactive geography games for students, as well as elementary school teacher resources. The CountryReports publishers maintain a blog and Facebook and Twitter accounts to connect educators and students with pages related to special events. Recent postings related to the 2012 Olympics featured links to the CountryReports topical pages displaying the flags and national anthems from countries around the world. According to the site's terms of use, fair use of copyrighted content is expressly permitted for non‐commercial educational purposes.
The contents of CountryReports are well organized and its interface is both intuitive and visually appealing. The text is generally accessible to most readers, though young students may not grasp longer narratives, such as the history pages of most countries. Maintaining this vast amount of content is no small undertaking, but it is unclear when each page or table within CountryReports was last updated. At the time of this review, CountryReports cites the same US population figures as does the CIA World Factbook's estimate from July 2012. Yet when comparing the population figures for Tanzania, CountryReports lists a figure five million lower than does the World Factbook's. The world's newest countries, Kosovo and South Sudan, do have listings in CountryReports, though its interactive flash maps have not yet been redrawn to show these countries. The report on South Sudan, which was established in 2011, is largely incomplete as of this writing. The lack of cited sources and “last updated” dates are the most significant shortcomings in the opinion of this reviewer, particularly for serving the needs of young adult and adult users.
Personal and institutional memberships to CountryReports are available on a 12‐month basis, with fees based on membership type, and the number of “editions” desired. Beyond the main CountryReports edition, subscribers may choose to pay for a US edition which provides similar reports for each of the 50 states. Spanish, French, or German language editions are also available, each of which features information about the countries where those languages are primarily spoken, and are translated to those same languages. Access may be granted by use of a shared username/password or by IP authentication.
CountryReports is recommended for K‐12 educators and school libraries, particularly for its coverage and presentation of international customs. A sample report for Argentina is freely accessible for readers who wish to further evaluate this product. Readers may also want to consider the free CIA World Factbook (RR 2010/302), or Britannica's World Data Analyst for statistical data on world nations. Infobase Learning's World Geography and Culture Online may be also be worthy of comparison (RR 2011/193).
