Confessions of a Mad Librarian

Thanks to the Librarian in Black and one of her readers, I found out about two interesting tools for reference/research librarians:

NationMaster:

... a massive central data source and a handy way to graphically compare nations. NationMaster is a vast compilation of data from such sources as the CIA World Factbook, United Nations, World Health Organization, World Bank, World Resources Institute, UNESCO, UNICEF and OECD. Using the form above, you can generate maps and graphs on all kinds of statistics with ease.

Not all of the data on the site is free. There are single user and multi-user licenses for companies and half price discounts available for educational institutions and non-profit organizations. But there appears to be enough free stats that will allow for enough trial/playing around to decide if the site is worth the license.

Statistical Resources on the Web:
There are probably a ton of pathfinders for websites that have government, corporate and industry statistics, but even with the cheesy, bitmapped icons ... this is so cool. Broken down by subject, with annotations ...

I'm sure that experienced librarians have their own little lists of "go-to" sites for this sort of information and not everything will be useful to everyone. But as a newbie librarian, this may be a very nice fallback site.