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Countries: What We Want to Know, Where We Go to Find It


What follows is a summary of our firm discussion of (1) what we'd want to know about a country, and (2) the sources we'd look to in finding that information. It has been pulled together by Ken Limore from your papers, and my notes of our group discussion. Rather than edit his memo I'll just pass it along to you as Ken Limore wrote it.

I would add only the following: Of the many "almanacs" that are published, there is one called The World Almanac that comes out every December. (The current one is dated "1997.") You may have a copy. If not, you can find one in almost any library. In it, you will find a section devoted to countries. Because I would like for our country descriptions to contain at least some common data (for purposes of preparing some charts or graphs of comparison) I would appreciate your getting from the latest edition of The World Almanac the following data regarding your country (in addition to whatever more information you want to include). (a) country name. (b) capital city. (c) population. (d) land area. (e) gross domestic product, and (f) per capita income. (g) basic unit of currency, and (h) the exchange rate (in the form of the number of those units per U.S. dollar). (i) electricity used, in billions of kilowatt hours per year. (j) number of television sets, and (k) phones (expressed in terms of numbers of persons per TV set or phone). (l) the percent of the population that is literate. And (m) the infant mortality rate (in terms of numbers of deaths per thousand live births). All of this information is there, in this one source, and should take you less than five minutes to copy. (To ensure that our information is consistent and comparable, just use The World Almanac for this purpose. If you want to update any of the figures, e.g., the rate of exchange, do it elsewhere in your country description. Or, put all the data from The World Almanac in an appendix to your description.) -- NJ

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Ken Limore Memo

PART I: Unduplicated list of the things the class thought they should know about a Country:

Demographics:

Leisure Activities

Economic:

Infrastructure:

Technology

Medical Services/Health Insurance coverage

Government

Legal System

PART II: Unduplicated list of the resources one would research to find information on another country.

Library

Internet

Fed. Govt..

Legal System

Trade Publications

Resource People

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