KNOWLEDGE
HUB

Resource

The World Factbook

2pm, October 08th, 2015

The World Factbook, produced for US policymakers and coordinated throughout the US intelligence community, marshals facts on every country, dependency, and geographic entity in the world. It provides information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 266 world entities.

A wide variety of people, including US Government officials, researchers, news organizations, corporations, geographers, teachers, professors, librarians, and students use the factbook.

Resources include:

Regional and world maps: contains a variety of JPG and PDF maps, by geographic region, covering the entire globe. Also available are World maps, a World Oceans map, and a Time Zone map.

Flags of the world: houses color images of national flags. Clicking on the ‘Flag’ button will display a larger image of the flag, in a new window, accompanied by a description. The country button links to the country entry.

Gallery of covers:  displays all the front and back cover designs of The World Factbook since 1981. Clicking on the image displays a larger version. The buttons underneath the large cover image allow users to scroll through the different covers.

Guide to country profiles: a listing of all of the fields that can possibly appear in a country entry.

Guide to country comparisons: lists all of the fields that contain rankings, comparing country to country.

Access the World Factbook.

Institutions Involved

  • US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
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