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G'day,

I always like to read your info on other countries particularly before I travel to them. Your info is fantastic and very helpful. Thank you for keeping your database updated and full of stuff. I am a town planner and it is very interesting to read up on the latest stats of the world's countries. Your World Factbook is excellent with populations and demographics, politics, and economic info.

I often go to the US for a holiday to see my relatives there. I love travelling to the States, shopping there and holidaying. I hope to go again next year. I wish your country all the very best.

Thanks once again. [An Australian visitor]

Thank you, on behalf of this one reader.

I also feel confident that if your staff and field personnel are working with the same kind of professionalism and integrity, that our country is well served by its intelligence agency in all corners of the world.

Thanks for your service.

Many greetings and keep on with the good work.

To my surprise I found that you now offer The Factbook as a download which is FANTASTIC! I just wanted to say thank you very much - in the modern world it's not often that people take time out to say thank you, and I wanted to do just that.

So thank you very much! It is appreciated!

Industries: leading industrial power in the world, highly diversified and technologically advanced; petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, consumer goods, lumber, mining.

That entry makes my heart swell with pride. Thanks for saying it, and keep up the good work.

For us [at the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, PCGN] the Factbook is an invaluable source of information which is readily accessible and easy to interpret. Knowing that the information contained therein is up-to-date and adheres to Board on Geographic Names/PCGN principles reinforces the authority of such a valuable resource.

At PCGN we use the Factbook as an important reference when assessing geopolitical information for UK Government cartographic products; the administrative division and transnational issues sections being particularly helpful in these cases. More broadly, we often consult the country pages when researching information for our briefing papers.

Furthermore, we are happy to be able to include a link to the Factbook from our website, so that our customers too can easily access this very useful source of geographical information.

We all hope that the Factbook will continue to appear and be maintained as a useful and reliable source of geopolitical information. [Toponymist, PCGN, c/o The Royal Geographical Society]

I have added some analysis of the geology and geography of a country to several bibliographies I have written for the Corps of Engineers and the federal government in response to a number of recent humanitarian crises. For example, my bibliographies on the geology of Burma (Myanmar) and another one on Somalia included a great deal of information from the CIA Factbook on the geography of those countries, especially the transportation capabilities such as roads, airports, shipping statistics, and other data.

I have generally found the data in the CIA Factbook to be current, concise and correct, and not usually available (or as easily available) elsewhere. [Researcher, Geospatial Information Library, US Army]

Regarding the Cross-Reference List of Country Codes. Kudos for a page that is neat, easy to read, and contains useful information laid out in a logical manner.

I love that you provide several forms of country coding all on one page, very convenient. Truly, sometimes it is required that I need to cross-reference from one type to another. [NGA GEOINT Aeronautical Intel Analyst]

The CIA Factbook is the primary source used by researchers and academics who track and try to quantify/qualify boundary and territorial disputes. I have seen any number of studies sponsored by USIP, OES and universities who rely on the Factbook's Transnational Issues section for current information on the status of such disputes. A search engine search of territorial and border disputes invariably brings up Factbook entries, past and present.

Just last Monday, while reviewing my Google Alerts bot on borders/boundaries, I found a paper by a Liberian writer/activist, who cited the Guinea-Senegal dispute, almost verbatim, from the Factbook.

I would hope that your Agency continues in its unswerving support for your valuable publication to provide the US Government with official information on the global community. As it is vetted through the [State] Department, it remains the unsurpassed authoritative, current, and consistent resource on US perspectives and foreign policy. [Boundary Specialist, US Department of State]

By the early 2000s, The World Factbook had replaced various traditional atlases and textbooks in becoming the predominant worldwide authority on current political geography information. Because no other source even approaches the Factbook's volume of usage and acceptance on the World Wide Web, this publication has, perhaps unintentionally, become one of the US Government's most cost-effective means of affecting information flow overseas under both democratic and autocratic regimes.

Measured within its purview of political, economic, and demographic overviews, the Factbook's reach and acceptance as authoritative has become the envy of other far more costly yet far less effective USG information programs. This level of accuracy, completeness, and effectiveness does not come by accident but only by the USG's continued resolve to support the Factbook program.

It should be noted that in no small manner, the contribution of the Factbook's cartography is as equally instrumental in worldwide dissemination of geographic knowledge as the Factbook's text.

Including both the simpler base maps for each Factbook entry as well as the more detailed regional maps, these public-domain products have, far and away, found more widespread dispersal on the World Wide Web than any other single source of overseas non-navigational mapping. The perhaps unintentional effect again is to assure effective dissemination of the USG's depiction of worldwide political boundaries and nomenclature.

For researchers needing quick, handy reference material, and lacking multiple computer screens that can be viewed simultaneously, the traditional hard copy version continues to be a valuable and indispensable resource as well. [Boundary Specialist, US Department of State]

I am working on a contract with the Department of Energy related to the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management.

The Joint Convention is an International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA initiative adopted in 1997. The World Factbook provides important country background information for US Government officials, specifically DOE, NRC, and EPA, scheduled to attend a meeting of all Contracting Parties. [Safety Specialist, Department of Energy]