BLDS Digital Library

The British Library for Development Studies (BLDS) has the largest collection of economic and social development materials in Europe and over half of it originates from developing countries. But until now, much of the BLDS physical collection has only been available to visitors to the library or users of its Document Delivery service. BLDS is hoping that its newly-launched Digital Library will help redress the situation by making developing country research more accessible and visible online

 

The new service, funded by the UK’s Department for International Development, has been created to help decades of research from developing country institutions enjoy a wider global readership. BLDS is working with partner research institutes in Africa and Asia, to digitise their printed publications and host them online so they can be easily found through search engines. Nearly 600 papers have been digitised so far from Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and India, with more to be added in coming months as BLDS continues building partnerships with research institutes. The publications in the BLDS Digital Library are being made available through a Creative Commons licence which enables future sharing and dissemination of this content by others.

For more information on the BLDS Digital Library, contactHenry Rowsell

or visit the BLDS Global Projects webpage athttp://blds.ids.ac.uk/global-projects

Economic Commission for Africa repository

Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has launched an institutional repository:

http://repository.uneca.org/

This will hold flagship publications, journals and reports from the regional branch of the UN. It aims to aid historic backfiles of annual reports, ECA conference proceedings and significant publications from the last 50 years. The latter include the African Governance report, African Women's Report, Economic report on Africa, Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Topics include economic development, agriculture, gender, health, international trade and governance.

International Household Survey Network

http://www.ihsn.org

The International Household Survey Network is maintained by the World Bank data group and aims to aims to improve the quality and access to information about surveys in developing countries. 


Key features of the site include a searchable catalogue of over 4,000 surveys covering hundreds of nations worldwide including those in developed nations. These enable users to quickly identify surveys undertaken in a specific nation by national; or international agencies. They include census and population surveys, household and economic surveys. Typical entries give dates, sampling methods and links to websites where information on access can be obtained. The site also has an extensive question bank plus tools and guidelines on micro data collection and questionnaire design and analysis. Entries for some countries date from the 1950s onwards.


For those interested in this topic BREAD is a non-profit organisation which specialises in development economics. It maintains a catalogue of data surveys from developing countries focusing more narrowly on poverty and health. There are 400 currently listed: http://ipl.econ.duke.edu:8080/survey/

EthioInfo

This new database released by the Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency (CSA) provides free access to some official data tracking millennium development goals. It contains data from the most recent population and
housing census (2007), which for the first time includes data on orphans, disability and maternal mortality at the regional and zonal levels. It also includes data at the woreda (district) level.

UNCSD 2012 (Rio + 20)

http://www.uncsd2012.org 
 

The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Division for Sustainable Development has launched a new website for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development 2012 (Rio+20). This will provide coverage of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in 2012 - also referred to as 'Rio+20' or 'Rio 20'.It includes background
information, news, timelines and UN documents.