Editorial: The UIS should post data on Google Fusion Tables

The UNESCO Institute of Statistics is an important repository for international statistics on education, science, culture and communications and information.

Google has provided the Fusion Data website to facilitate sharing and visualization of data. It is an experimental system for data management in the cloud. It draws on the expertise of folks within Google Research who have been studying collaboration, data integration, and user requirements from a variety of domains.

Thus Google Fusion Data offers the possibility to users to easily combine data from various sources, and to visualize that data using charts, maps, etc. Public information already available on the site includes country GDP and Child Survival.

Adding publicly available data from UNESCO would help contribute to public understanding of UNESCO's key concerns as people used the facilities, help social scientists to carry out statistical analyses, and help public policy makers to do analyses using the data more quickly and easily.

Read the Google Research Blog posting on Fusion Tables

Take the Guided Tour

This seems like a no brainer, and a great partnership between UNESCO and a leading American firm.

Did you know UNESCO has online resources you can use?

Here are a couple of very useful resources free for you to download:

The UNESCO Thesaurus is widely used to standardize the terminology used to describe content in the areas of education, science, culture, social and human sciences, information and communication, and politics, law and economics. It also includes the names of countries and groupings of countries: political, economic, geographic, ethnic and religious, and linguistic groupings. Check it out!

Micro CDS/ISIS is an advanced non-numerical information storage and retrieval software developed by UNESCO since 1985 to satisfy the need of organizations to streamline their information processing activities by using modern (and relatively inexpensive) PC technologies.

• CDS/ISIS for Windows


• GenISIS: DB publishing


• Information Processing Tools


• IsisAscii


• IsisMarc


• Javaisis


• WEBLIS

Micro CDS/ISIS Database and Related Software

Micro CDS/ISIS is an advanced non-numerical information storage and retrieval software developed by UNESCO. It is available free of charge from UNESCO itself and from a worldwide network of distributors.

CDS/ISIS is a generalised Information Storage and Retrieval system. The Windows version may run on a single computer or in a local area network. The JavaISIS client/server components allow remote database management over the Internet and are available for Windows, Linux and Macintosh. Furthermore, GenISIS allows the user to produce HTML Web forms for CDS/ISIS database searching. The ISIS_DLL provides an API for developing CDS/ISIS based applications.

There are information processing tools available as well that link to CDS/ISIS:

IDAMS is a software package for processing and analysing numerical data. It provides a great number of data manipulation and validation facilities and a wide range of classical and advanced statistical techniques. Interactive components allow for construction of multidimensional tables, graphical exploration of data and time series analysis. WinIDAMS software (IDAMS for 32-bit Windows operating system) as well as its documentation are available in English, French, Portuguese and Spanish.

IDIS is a tool for direct data exchange between CDS/ISIS and IDAMS.

Knowledge and training in the use of information processing tools is as important as the tools themselves. At present, UNESCO offers a computerized tutorial "How to work with WinIDAMS", available both on stand-alone PC configurations and in virtual courses through the Internet.

Greenstone Digital Library Software is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

These software products were developed to meet the needs for free and open software in developing nations, and may be of special interest to U.S. organizations involved in development assistance. CDS/ISIS has been used extensively by UNESCO itself in the creation of online databases. Therefore the software might also be of interest to some U.S. organizations for their domestic applications.

Check out other software available from UNESCO.