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Foreign Government Information

a guide to resources for information about foreign governments.

Strategy 4: Use a Subject approach

You could also use one of the major search engines [e.g., Google, Bing] to locate information on your topic. If you choose subject searching, keep in mind these principles:

Do not assume that the pages will be in English. To thoroughly search you must use both English words and words in the country's native language. For example: to search for statistics from a Spanish-speaking country, do the search once with statistics and then a second time with estadisticas. Also consider alternative spellings of English words such as organization and organisation.

Be prepared to sift through a lot of non-governmental materials before you reach the government materials.

Be an intelligent information consumer. You are likely to find a lot of questionable information as well as many useful sites. Be sure that the sites you identify are reputable sources and that you understand what political bias might be promoted.