Library Journal
July 1999
Database & Disc Reviews
July 1999
Database & Disc Reviews
Polling the Nations 1986-
ORS Publishing (800-
Info@orspub.com
www.orspub.com
Date reviewed: 5/21/99
Long available on CD-ROM, Polling the Nations is now available on the web. Covering polls for the years 1986 through 1998, the database is updated quarterly (although the goal is to have monthly updates).
The size and scope of this resource is testimony to how prevalent polling is in our culture. The database includes 12,000 surveys and 250,000 questions on more than 3,500 topics. Scope is international, from the United States to more than 60 other countries. The breadth and depth of sources is quite staggering. I expected to find Gallup, Harris and Roper here, but there are also polls from the Detroit Free Press, 48 Hours, Kellogg, the Reno Police Department, GQ Magazine, Eurobarometer, Playboy, NYT/CBS News, Avon Products, TV Guide, Harvard Community Health Plan, Center for Disease Control, Florida State University, AFL-CIO, Gallup Hungary, and Market Resource Group, among others. All told, more than 700 organizations are represented by the polls at this site.
Searching is straightforward but could be improved. There is a Topic box for searching broad headings, but nowhere on the site is it revealed what these headings are (there is no list given). So most users probably will search in the free-text area and limit it by date, geographic area, and source. Although free-text searching is the way many will look for their information, it would be good to have an easily accessible list of the topics assigned within the database and the sources. Still, the range is impressive. It seems as if polling results on all the issues of your lives are here. From pollution, Y2K, and zoos to personal finance, public schools, retirement, and housing costs in New York City.
Upon retrieving a poll, users get the complete original question, responses, date of the poll, poll methodology (in person, via phone), the number polled, geographic area polled, and the source (hint to ORS for the future; link to the source’s web site would be a handy feature to add). The retrieval presents the first 15 results but does not give the total amount of hits, and you have to continue requesting items in groups of 15 to work your way through all the results (this should be a quick-and-easy fix and is strongly urged: searchers need to know the size of results up front). Poll lists can be sorted in a variety of ways as well.
The Bottom Line: With a little tweaking in search and display features, Polling the Nations has the potential to be a Best of the Year electronic product. In its current implementation, the information it provides is sufficiently valuable to recommend it to all libraries.
Ed Tallent, Research Instruction, Harvard Coll. Lib.
Please note: The interface for Polling the Nations has been upgraded since this review was written. Taking into account the comments here, Polling the Nations now has a topic list, reports the number of hits for a search, includes polls through 2005 and is updated monthly.
