Internet Reviews

Joni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost

Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian for public services and collection development at Willamette University, email: jroberts@willamette.edu, and Carol A. Drost is associate university librarian for technical services at Willamette University, email: cdrost@willamette.edu

Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Access: https://iwpr.org.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) is a research organization whose goal is to create awareness and inspire change around government and social policies that inhibit the equal progress of women. This website pulls together qualitative and quantitative datasets from a variety of federal and state government reports. There are full reports, fact sheets, and briefing papers on a variety of topics discussing gender disparity.

Some reports are outdated, but the website rotates interesting facts and features current reports in a featured publications sidebar. Information on IWPR is best accessed through the broad directories from the homepage. Additionally, there is an option to search the website.

IWPR isn’t necessarily a good tool for current news on a topic, but some of the major reports were updated in 2018. There is a newsletter that may be of interest to faculty and/or librarians studying women’s study, public policy, or sociology. IWPR’s uniqueness stems from its gendered approach to research on a national level, and, to some extent, international gender data.

Of particular interest is the “Status of Women in the States” tool, which is an interactive map-based conglomeration of census data. Each state is rated on an A-to- F scale on topics, such as “Poverty & Opportunity,” “Health & Well Being,” “Political Participation,” and “Reproductive Rights.” Selecting a state will give an overview of data and statistics from 2018 and 2015.

IWPR was founded in 1987 with a mission to “develop comprehensive women-focused public-policy research.” This website discusses studies that address myriad gender gaps in broad topical areas, such as work and family, employment, education, poverty, health, and safety. IWPR doesn’t pretend to be nonbiased. Sponsors of state reports come from the National Organization for Women, American Federation of Teachers, and Women’s Funding Network, just to name a few. This may be an issue for anyone who may take umbrage with partiality of the research. However, upon examination, all datasets come from accredited sources. IWPR unapologetically and strategically endeavors to shed light on current day gender inequalities.—Molly Susan Mathias, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, mathiasm@uwm.edu

Our World in Data. Access: https://www.ourworldindata.org.

Data are the lifeblood for any research project, from an undergraduate capstone project to a complex business white paper. What better source of needed data is a database of databases that supply crucial information? This meta-database exists in the form of Our World in Data, a multisubject database of databases established and maintained by Oxford University.

Max Roser, economist at Oxford University, along with a staff of 12 contributors, researchers, and advisors, created this database in 2011, in order to demonstrate “how [world] living conditions are changing . . . [and] to understand why living conditions improved so that we can seek more of what works.”

Topics found in this website include population, health, energy, environment, growth and inequality, education, and politics. Each topic consists of various and relevant subtopics. With energy, for instance, the researcher will find subtopics that include renewable energy and fossil fuels. Topics and subtopics include descriptive and well-written descriptions of the data results, as well as colorful, easy-to-read graphs and charts. What is unique and beneficial about this website is that all the data contained on the site are free for all to use in their work—consider this database an open source of knowledge and information for everyone.

The website updates its statistics regularly. Also found on this site are a regularly updated blog, as well as Sustainable Development Goals through the year 2030. These are targets for global growth and development adopted by the United Nations in 2015. The database tracks these goals on a regular basis and provides regular updates on the website, providing researchers with not only a wealth of statistics, but also with ongoing and current statistics.

Researchers at any level of education, from high school student to college undergraduate, from doctoral candidate to professor, will find the Our World in Data website a vast and useful resource to support their work with updated statistical information. Very highly recommended, due to the richness of its open source data content.—Larry Cooperman, University of Central Florida Libraries, Orlando, lawrence.cooperman@ucf.edu

The World Inequality Database. Access: https://wid.world/.

The World Inequality Database (WID) is an open-access database of the world’s historical and current distribution of wealth and incomes within and between countries. It strives to disseminate high-quality data on issues of economic inequality along with promoting democratic transparency. The extended production of the Distributional National Accounts (DINA) guidelines, which presents the concepts, data sources, and methods of WID database, is one of the main goals of WID.

More than 100 researchers from 70 countries contribute to this resource, but it is coordinated by an executive committee of five codirectors from the Paris School of Economics and the University of California-Berkeley.

The World Inequality Lab, which comprises 20 research fellows, also contributes to the database. WID was formerly known as the World Top Incomes Database in 2011, but in January 2017, it was relaunched as the World Inequality Database. It is funded by nonprofit and public institutions along with personal donations. Data is collected from several sources such as national accounts, survey data, fiscal data, and wealth rankings.

Upperclassmen, graduate students, and researchers within economic, business, political science, social science, sociology, finance, and geographic information system disciplines would find this resource useful for gaining visual representation of data on adult national income, population, gross domestic product, and much more. WID also contains useful information such as the “World Inequality Reports,” open access datasets, and a searchable library. The latest news offers easy access to briefs, updates, technical notes, and more. Subscribing to the newsletter provides updates about WID.

The FAQ section contains details on how WID differs from other sources, how to read their graphs, and where they get their information. WID is available in multiple languages and is accessible on Internet-enabled tablets and smartphones with no loss of data or information provided. Users can share the datasets on social media, embed it in their websites, and control which variables to use when evaluating multiple countries or assessing the wealth-income ratio in one country.—Twanna Hodge, SUNY Upstate Medical University Health Sciences Library, hodgetw@upstate.edu