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The World Factbook

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The World Factbook 2006 cover
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The World Factbook 2006 cover

The World Factbook is an annual publication by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States with basic almanac-style information about the various countries of the world. The factbook gives a two- to three-page summary of the demographics, location, telecommunications capacity, government, industry, military capability, etc, of all U.S.-recognized countries and territories in the world.

As The World Factbook is prepared by the CIA for the use of U.S. government officials, the style, format, coverage and content are primarily designed to meet their specific requirements. However, it is frequently used as a resource for student papers, web sites and various non-governmental publications. As a work of the U.S. government, it is considered to be in the public domain (see copyright status below).

Contents

Sources

Information is provided by:

Copyright

The World Factbook website as it appeared in February and March 2005
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The World Factbook website as it appeared in February and March 2005

Because the Factbook is in the public domain, people are free to redistribute and modify it in any way they like, without permission of the CIA.

The official seal of the CIA, however, may not be copied without permission as required by the CIA Act of 1949 (50 U.S.C. section 403m). Misuse of the official seal of the CIA could result in civil and criminal penalties:

Federal law prohibits use of the words "Central Intelligence Agency," the initials "CIA," the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central Intelligence Agency. [Use of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal]
Many Internet sites have used information and images from the CIA World Factbook, because of its public domain status.

Oddities and controversies

Political

The factbook contains many peculiarities resulting from the diplomatic policies of the United States and does not always take a neutral point of view. As an official publication of the United States government, the factbook lists the official policy of the United States government as fact often with little more than a footnote to indicate that the fact is disputed or that a contrary position exists. The factbook often highlights diplomatic disputes that are recognized by the United States, but ignores or downplays disputes that are not favored by the government's foreign policies. For example:

Factual

Controversy about the Factbook arose in 1998 when British journalists noticed the U.K. section contained some oddities - most notably the line "Independence: 1 January 1801 (United Kingdom established)". [link] By 2005 this terse, confusing description had been greatly expanded. [link]

Geography

Although great care is given to representing the borders of countries factually, the choice of cities represented on the map seems sometimes idiosynchratic. For example, the overall map of the United Kingdom lists the town of Grangemouth in Scotland, although it is only a small town (population 18,500) and in no way a major city (this is perhaps due to its status as a major centre of the oil industry in Scotland after Aberdeen. It is also part of the Falkirk urban area which, with a population of around 90,000 and with the larger Falkirk Council Area having a population density of 496/km², is one of the most populous and most densely inhabited urban centres after the conurbations of greater Glasgow and Edinburgh and the cities of Dundee and Aberdeen. Although it would still be an anomaly to refer to this area as "Grangemouth" rather than "Falkirk", the principle burgh in the district).

The map of Sweden at one time included Tärnaby with 500 inhabitants, a town basically unknown except for a few notable natives. ([map])

The map of the United States contains Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, the only city noted in the state other than Anchorage. Despite being an oil field town with several thousand temporary workers at any given time, the town has a permanent population of only five people according to the 2000 census.

House style

The factbook uses standard American English, even for the proper names of non-US political parties. [link] As a consequence, Britain's Labour Party is spelled "Labor". The Factbook's house style for spelling defers to the United States Board on Geographic Names and the CIA itself; as a consequence the head of Al-Qaeda is referred to as Bin Ladin [link] and the ruler of Libya is referred to as Qadhafi. [link]

Despite the aforementioned quirks and anomalies in the factbook, it remains a quite accurate source of geographical and political information used by a variety of sources outside the CIA.

See also

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

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