dec09b.indd C&RL News December 2009 710 Joni R. Roberts is associate university librarian for public services and collection development at Willamette University, e-mail: jroberts@willamette.edu, and Carol A. Drost is associate university librarian for technical services at Willamette University, e-mail: cdrost@ willamette.edu I n t e r n e t R e v i e w sJoni R. Roberts and Carol A. Drost Recovery.gov. Access: http://www.recov- ery.gov/Pages/home.aspx. The offi cial U.S. government Web site created to monitor activities initiated by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of February 2009, Recovery.gov provides data on the spending of federal funds and the management of programs that have resulted from the Recovery initiative. The homepage features a number of eye- catching charts, graphs, maps, and tables illustrating various facets of the recovery process, with links directing users to the source material for each feature. For example, a color coded map in the center of the page illustrates the geographical distribution of federal contracts, with buttons that allow tog- gling between recipient reporting and agency reporting. By running the cursor over the map, fi nancial data for each state appears in a pop-up window. An additional search by ZIP code provides information at the local level. The menu bar at the top of the homepage provides access to categories of resources. Included are resource buttons for “Account- ability,” “Where Is The Money Going?,” “Op- portunities,” “News,” “FAQs & Resources,” and “Contact Us.” Drop-down menus direct users to more specific data and reports. Under “Accountability,” there is a link to of- fi ces of Inspectors General, where the user can choose a particular agency and access fi ndings, reports, plans, etc. Also under “Ac- countability” is a link to General Accounting Offi ce reports. “Where Is The Money Going?” links us- ers to agency and recipient data, as well as state, territorial, and tribal-level information. This section also provides a list of contracts awarded that are noncompetitive, nonfi xed- price, or both (the Recovery Act dictates that most contracts will use competitive proce- dures and be fi xed priced). Other features include a link that allows reportage on fraud, waste and abuse, which can be found under “Contact Us” and as a separate button at the right top of each page of the site. There are also extensive tutorials available under “FAQs & Resources.” This site is recommended for an informed citizenry who want to test the transparency of governmental action and students and scholars researching government responses to the current economic downturn.—Ford Schmidt, Willamette University, fschmidt@ willamette.edu The ARDA. Access: http://www.thearda. com/. The Association of Religious Data Archives (ARDA) is maintained by the Department of Sociology at Pennsylvania State University- University Park and is funded by the Lilly Endowment, Johnson Templeton Foundation, and Penn State. ARDA functions as an archive and hence is a depository for data sets. It was originally targeted at researchers interested in American religion, but has been expanded to include international collections. The tool bar on the homepage allows easy entry to the material archived by ARDA. For example, “Data Archive” provides access to U.S. church membership at the state and county level. Here, the researcher will also fi nd surveys of the general population, such as those conducted by the Baylor Institute of Religion and the Pew Research Center. “National Profi les” lists the nations of the world alphabetically. For each nation, the subcategory “Religious Demography” details the breakdown of the population’s reli- gious affi liation. For example: Germany is 72% Christian, split almost evenly between Roman Catholics and Protestants (approxi- mately 26 million each); Iran is 98% Muslim, of whom 89% are Shi’ites. “U.S. Congrega- December 2009 711 C&RL News tional Membership” contains a very exciting feature. The researcher can enter a ZIP code and retrieve county membership reports, which include the name of the denomination and the number of congregations and adher- ents. ZIP code 60115 (the home ZIP code for Northern Illinois University) lists 90 con- gregations with more than 40,000 members/ adherents. Congregational adherents include all full members, their children, and others who regularly attend service but excludes historically African American denominations. “Denominations” offers membership data (clergy, congregations, and members) by year for most U.S. denominations. The tool bar on the homepage also has a search screen. Most of the searches entered will return survey data. For example, the results for the term “abortion” begin with the fi ndings of the General Social Survey, 2004. The term “cloning” returns the Religion and Public Life Survey 2003, and categorizes the answers from respondents who oppose scientifi c experimentation on the cloning of human beings. ARDA’s provides ready-reference de- mographics on American mainline Chris- tian denominations. It is not as strong on smaller denominations, fringe groups, and other religions. ARDA will prove useful to lower-division undergraduates who need demographic data for their persuasive or argumentative papers. Researchers in po- litical science, sociology, and 20th-century American history will also fi nd a wealth of data in ARDA. For a greater variety of sur- veys, the patron can be referred to the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.—Wen- dell G. Johnson, Northern Illinois University, wjohnso1@niu.edu UNdata. Access: http://data.un.org/. The United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD) states as its core mission “to advance the development of the global statistical system and promote the dissemination of statistical information.” For 60 years the United Nations (UN) has been collecting and publishing statistical data from its member states on a wide range of economic, social, political, cultural, and environmental issues. The goal of the UNdata Web site is to gather statistics from 24 separate databases and make them all accessible through one search interface. UNdata is replacing the United Nations Common Database, which had a smaller selection of UNSD data avail- able for users. Other new features offered by UNdata include an online glossary, country profi les, and a wiki. The front page of the site lists the separate databases, and provides links to “Updates” and country statistical offi ces. The site provides basic and advanced keyword searching options. Users may fi nd it particularly useful to click on “more” above the basic search box, select “advanced search,” then check the box next to “include data series content in the search.” A search using the keyword “HIV” returned 42 results in the basic search, and 170 results using the advanced search of all data series content option. Another search option listed under “more” is “Explorer,” which offers users the opportunity to browse the databases and data sets. When a data set is located, the user is presented with an option to preview the data. The data can then be customized us- ing country or area and time period fi lters. Researchers can select which columns they would like to be displayed and decide how they would like the elements to be sorted. There is also an option to “link to this page,” so that a permanent URL will be created for the data. Users can download the data as a comma-delimited fi le for use in an Excel spreadsheet or as an XML-coded page for use on a Web site. UNData provides a wealth of statisti- cal information with options for users to save and manipulate the data in a variety of formats. It would be more helpful if the search options were more transparent for users. This database should be linked from every academic library Web site.—Gerri Foudy, University of Maryland-College Park, gfoudy@umd.edu