Resources
Information Resource Center (IRC)
The Information Resource Center, a part of the Public Affairs Section, is a research and reference service that consists of publications and electronic information sources. It specializes in providing information about current U.S. foreign and domestic policies, U.S. news, Congressional legislation, trade matters, and social and cultural issues. It conducts workshops on the Internet use. The IRC provides access to the Internet with its 9 public Internet terminals for research and reference purposes. The IRC is open Monday through Saturday: Mon.-Fri. from 9:00 a.m. till 6:00 p.m. with lunch break from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.; and on Saturday from 1:00pm till 6:00pm.
The resources of the center consist increasingly of electronic information available on a dozen CD-ROMs and the Internet. The IRC maintains a reference collection of about 1000 publications and 28 leading periodicals.
The IRC in Ashgabat has access to commercial on-line databases such as Lexis-Nexis, StatUSA, Leadership Directories, Factiva and others. Lexis-Nexis covers U.S. federal and state case law, with continually updated statutes of all 50 states, and state and federal regulations. Nexis is a leading news and business information service of more than 13,500 sources, including regional, national, and international newspapers, newswires, magazines, trade journals, and business periodicals. Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company,is a web-based service that provides tools for researching and monitoring news and business information from nearly 8,000 sources and 9,000 key web-sites. It allows same day, full-text coverage of Wall Street Journal, Los Angles Times, New York Times, and business sections from 54 papers around the United States. It also provides full-text of over 265 regional newspapers and 175 international publications and papers. Approximately 2,800 business and trade publications and transcripts from BBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, NPR are included. The Leadership Directories database provides 14 different directories and over 30 criteria to locate an individual working the leadership positions in federal, state and local levels. STAT-USA/Internet, a service of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is a single point of access to authoritative business, trade, and economic information from across the Federal Government.
The IRC assistant assists to locate and obtain news articles, reports, studies and electronic publications produced by the International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State and various think-tanks in the United States. The IRC also regularly hosts webchat sessions with outstanding scholars and practitioners on a variety of subjects, and movie/documentary showings and discussions.
The IRC assistant provides quick reference assistance and research, using these print and digital sources. Please make queries by telephone, e-mail, fax or in person. Demonstration sessions on the resources and services of the IRC, as well as Internet training workshops, can be arranged for groups upon request.
Information and Subscription Services
- Daily Electronic Distribution of Washington File. By subscription. This service delivers speeches, press releases, daily briefings, testimonies and reports by top U.S. Government officials; Articles related to American policy, economy, society and institutions.
- Weekly paper/electronic distribution of selected official information pieces. This service is a collection of three to four articles selected for a wider distribution of Washington File news pieces and articles on key policy issues. By subscription.
- ADSurls (Advance Documents URLs) . An e-mail service to inform of major newly appearing articles, reports and policy reviews about the U.S.
- Distribution of publications. IRC regularly distributes and donates various publications and InfoUSA CD-ROMs about the United States at the U.S. Embassy Ashgabat public events.
- Current issues. Stop by at our information shelf for issues in focus or subscribe to occasional current issues articles.
Information Retrieval
- Reference assistance in finding information resources
- Retrieving information upon request;
- Lending of periodical publications and books
Topical Presentations and Workshops
- Working with Internet
- Internet search strategies
- Essential skills in building a web-page
- Online resources on topics of your interest
