Internet Reviews

Joni R. Roberts and Carol 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.

Federal Trade Commission. Access: https://www.ftc.gov/.

Established in 1914, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent federal agency with a mission of “protecting the public from deceptive or unfair business practices and from unfair methods of competition through law enforcement, advocacy, research, and education.” The FTC site is a hub for information related to consumer protection and competition, with a slimmer Spanish language option.

Due to the many entities under the FTC, the site covers a lot of ground. Its organization revolves around actions in three categories: “Enforcement,” “Policy,” and “Advice and Guidance.” There are also “News and Events” and an “About the FTC” sections. “About the FTC” gives the agency’s history, mission, links to bureaus and offices, and an organizational chart. It’s an excellent resource for those learning about government functions, civic participation, and history. Each of the “Enforcement,” “Policy,” and “Advice and Guidance” sections supplies bulleted lists of associated actions. The “Enforcement” and “Policy” sections assume some subject familiarity and have many subsections. The site makes up for learning curves with plenty of introductory and contextualizing information. The “Advice and Guidance” is more novice-friendly and similar to a robust FAQ section.

The site has a simple search box with limited filtering options. While the search results include legal content, the FTC advises users looking for legal information to search its FTC Legal Library. The FTC Legal Library is not available in Spanish. The FTC Legal Library contains cases, proceedings, statutes, HSR formal and informal interpretations, and other types of records, with quick links to its most sought-after document types. The FTC Legal Library has more robust search filters—record type, mission, type of action, federal court, industry, case status, enforcement types, as well as the option to search by matter number, civil action number, or by date range.

Overall, the FTC site is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and laypeople looking for information on the agency’s functionality, its place in the US legal system, legal documents related to consumer protection and competition in the marketplace, the latest scams, or to report fraud. The site is a must for students and faculty studying and teaching business, economics, law, and political science.—Maria Planansky, Alfred University, planansky@alfred.edu

Gender Data Portal. Access: https://genderdata.worldbank.org/.

The World Bank’s Gender Data Portal is a valuable and important resource for worldwide data regarding sex-disaggregated data and gender statistics. Some countries have more available data than others. On the topic of “Population,” data typically goes back to 1960 for all countries. For other topics, the data hasn’t been collected for as long and availability varies by country. The data can be downloaded as a CSV file, which can be opened in Microsoft Excel or imported into software applications like R, Python, or Stata. The charts and visualization can be downloaded as PNG files. Data can also be accessed through APIs.

The Gender Data Portal is a trusted and well-established resource for data and statistics. It collects data on different topics through the years as the organization responds to changing data needs. World Bank funding may be impacted if the current US administration continues to implement Project 2025, which calls for the US to withdraw and stop payments supporting World Bank. Alternative data sources like the OECD Gender Data Portal, the UNESCO Institute of Statistics World Inequality Database on Education by Gender, and the WHO Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health Data Portal could also be impacted by withdrawal of support by the United States. The Gender Data Portal does include a list of other providers of gender data portals under the “Resources” menu, but World Bank Gender Data Portal is the most comprehensive collection of data indicators from countries all over the world.

The website itself is easy to navigate and logically organized. Users can navigate the data by economy, topic, or indicator. The site even includes links to “Data Courses” under the “Resources” menu for users wanting to learn more about data literacy.

In short, Gender Data Portal is a rich resource for gender statistics that is appropriate for college undergraduates, graduate students, researchers, and practitioners in areas such as sociology, business, economics, political science, and interdisciplinary areas like women and gender studies.—Kristen Peters, Wittenberg University, petersk@wittenberg.edu

National Low Income Housing Coalition. Access: https://nlihc.org/.

The lack of low-income housing is a national concern. Many full-time minimum wage workers cannot afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment, much less buy a home. Library patrons looking for information on this issue can be referred to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) website. The NHILC was founded in 1974 by Cushing N. Dolbeare, a former member of the President’s Commission on Housing, and seeks to preserve federally assisted housing while expanding the supply of low-income housing. Among the events sponsored by the NLIHC is their annual Housing Policy Forum, which brings together community advocates, policy experts, and affordable housing advocates. The coalition’s annual reports (2015–2023), retrievable from the “About Us” link on the homepage, highlights its work. The NLIHC also publishes Tenant Talk, a magazine for and by residents of publicly assisted housing.

Researchers can find an overview of affordable housing needs under the link “Housing Needs by State.” Across California, for example, there is a shortage of rental homes available to extremely low-income (ELI) households, those whose incomes are at or below the federal poverty line or 30% of their area median income (AMI). Thus, in California, 1,282,835 (21%) renter households are considered ELI. The annual household income needed to afford a two-bedroom rental home at HUD’s Fair Market Rent is $98,545, while the average income limit for an ELI in the state is $33,520. The NLIHC estimates that California has a shortage of 972,082 affordable rental homes available to ELI renters. Compare these figures to those for the state of Mississippi, where the average income limit for a four-person ELI household is $27, 750 and the annual household income needed to afford a two-bedroom rental home at HUD’s Fair Market Rent is $41,671. “Housing Needs by State” also provides graphs depicting “Affordable and Available Homes per 100 Renter Households” (based on ELI) and “Housing Burden by Income Group” (based on AMI).

In addition to data regarding the availability of low-income housing, the NLIHC provides information on issues such as housing-related tax credits, racial equity and fair housing, and housing vouchers. Researchers interested in public policy, sociology, and related areas, will find this site useful.—Wendell G. Johnson, Northern Illinois University, wjohnso1@niu.edu