If you’re in the social sciences, at some point you’ve probably wanted to find data for an assignment, but struggled to find exactly what you’re looking for. In today’s post, find out how to find data and reports from OECD iLibrary…
Don’t miss out on OECD publications!
You might have heard of The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) but did you know that you can access most of its books, articles, statistics and data in OECD iLibrary, one of the databases which is freely available through the Library website and the link to Databases? The OECD publishes a very wide range of material on socio-economic topics, covering OECD member states and some other countries as well. The reports are not individually accessible through our Library Search but the database will help you to find them easily.
If you want to read OECD reports but hate read-only pdfs, we recommend that you log on to OECD iLibrary through the Warwick Library website. As well as finding reports which you can download, you can search for a combination of commentary and data, browse through ready-made data tables, or customise the data in OECD.Stat. The database has recently been given a new look, and it now flags up reports which are about to be published.
You can search by Theme, by Country, or by Theme and Country combined, to browse the database contents by topic. After that, you can filter the results by category – books, statistics etc. The Catalogue option allows you to search for each type of material separately, and then browse by year of publication, or by title. One tip is to use the advanced search in this database and look for words in the title and abstract of each item, which allows you to find the most relevant reports and tables quickly. Data is provided in Excel format, and the ready-made tables may also be downloaded as pdf documents. OECD iLibrary is a really useful collection of material for research. It is not only relevant to social scientists – it might also interest students and staff in History, Life Sciences or WMG. Try it and see!