Interested users can also navigate the site by topic across cultures. A highlight of the site is the ability it gives the user to view the entire chronology, or to click on a year and culture and then another culture, in order to compare cross-cultural developments at the same time period. The site is a work in progress that promises maps and images in the near future. Simple content is conveyed graphically and imaginatively at this site. Users with slower connections should be patient, however.
Archives are available at the site, as are submission guidelines.
The University of Michigan Library, which has downloaded a subset of the Department of Commerce's Economic Bulletin Board data and made it freely available on its EBB gopher since 1992, will suspend its updating of these files on October 9, 1996. The gopher, which contains hundreds of files on the economy, energy, foreign trade, business, and industry, has long been a staple source for economic and social science researchers. STAT-USA is also free to participating Federal Depository Libraries. The University of Michigan Library, which began the service before most federal agencies had access to the Internet, is presently considering the merits of archiving the existing gopher. The Department of State and University of Illinois at Chicago Libraries now distribute via email full texts of two US Department of State publications that provide key official information on US foreign policy.