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Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS)

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) is an agency of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Since the 1940s FBIS has monitored, translated, and republished selected foreign radio and television broadcasts, newspaper articles, government news agency releases, and political speeches. The selection of items to be included has been determined by the needs of FBIS primary users, who are officials of the U.S. Government. Political, military, economic, and environmental topics are the major emphases. The translations have been published as quickly as possible--usually within a few days of original publication--in a series of daily reports. Since 1996 the service has been available online through a Worldwide Web site known as the World News Connection.

The University of Oregon Library has acquired FBIS translations in a variety of formats since 1946. The following list describes their formats and locations:

1946-1951 (paper): FBIS Daily Reports (White Book version). Each daily issue contains several sections, each dealing with a world region such as the Soviet Union or the Far East. Location: Documents, Shelving Range C16A.

January 1952-March 1974 (microfilm): FBIS Daily Reports (White Book). Location: Microforms Collection, Microfilm D 839.U63.

1974-1977 (paper): FBIS Daily Reports (regional series). The UO Library has only the regional series for China (1974-1977), Eastern Europe (1974-1977) and the Soviet Union (1974-1976). Location: Documents, Shelving Range C16A.

1978-August 1996 (microfiche): FBIS Daily Reports (regional series). Daily Reports for the entire period for all regions is available in microfiche, and printed indexes are available for varying periods for each region. A CD-ROM index (DOC-LC/CR JA1.I53 1991-96) covers the years 1991-1996 for all regions. Location for Daily Reports: Microforms Collection, Documents Microfiche PREX 7.10.

1996-date (CD-ROM): FBIS Publications (DOC-US PREX 7.10/3) Quarterly CD-ROM disks contain the full texts of FBIS articles from all regions. This CD-ROM product is unrelated to the World News Connection (WNC) online service (see next entry), and includes some articles not found in WNC.

9/1995-date (Internet): World News Connection. This website, which is maintained by the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), is updated daily. WNC's coverage of FBIS does not include some articles found in the FBIS Publications CD-ROMs (see above), due to restrictions imposed by original publishers. Use normally requires a password, but users at the University of Oregon may link to it free from the Library's news stories page .

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Maintained by: Tamara Vidos, tamarav@uoregon.edu
Last Modified: 09/25/2006