Columbia International Affairs OnlineHelp

Columbia International Affairs Online (CIAO) is the world’s most comprehensive electronic database for theory and research in international affairs. It publishes a wide range of scholarship, from 1991 onward, that includes working papers, occasional papers, policy briefs, conferences proceedings, e-books, and journals.

Our navigation bar organizes material by category. This is especially helpful for individuals who would like to browse an institution’s conference proceedings, a favorite journal, or books by a specific publisher.

WORKING PAPERS

Works in progress, papers to be submitted for publication in, or chapters intended for publication.

JOURNALS

A collection of journal articles and abstracts in the field of International Affairs. Most journals are full text; partial text journals are denoted by an asterisk (*).

BOOKS

Collection of books listed by publisher. To browse by author, subject, or title, refer to Site Index.

POLICY BRIEFS

Short, topical essays and position papers.

CASE STUDIES

Original papers written exclusively for CIAO by leading scholars that examine the effects of important events in history, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and recurring topics like weapons of mass destruction and global warming. With extensive bibliographies, multi-media, key treaties, and speeches, the CIAO case study is an ideal international affairs subject guide, which easily launches and promotes extensive class discussion.

COURSE PACKS

Ready-made selections of CIAO materials—journal articles, book chapters, working papers, and policy briefs—for learning about international affairs, chosen to provide students with opposing views and provocative arguments on a given topic. Each pack includes a sidebar of links to other outside sources, maps, and primary materials.

ATLAS

The new atlas section is an exciting partnership with the Economist Intelligence Unit. With information updated quarterly, the atlas presents current and archived economic and political reports on 201 countries.

Using the Interactive Map

The interactive maps in the atlas section enable access to country reports provided by the Economist Intelligence Unit. There is a world map on the home page of the atlas section and eight regional maps. On the world map, moving a mouse over a region will highlight that region and clicking on a region will return the regional map. On regional maps, navigate by moving the red-outlined rectangle in the mini map, which is located near the lower right corner of the map. Moving a mouse over a country will highlight that country; clicking will return the country reports page.

The map was developed by the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship.

SEARCHING

CIAO’s search engine allows you to search for documents by entering keywords and/or phrases. For example, searching for disarmament will return pages containing this word, including results where the word is not visible on the screen, but is only visible in the meta data for the page. If more than one keyword is entered, the results will include pages in which at least one of the search terms appears. In other words, if one is searching for nuclear disarmament, the results will contain pages with either or both words. To limit results to pages where both terms appear, connect terms with an upper-case and, e.g. nuclear AND disarmament. To search for a phrase, surround the words in quotation marks. For example, searching for "nuclear disarmament" will return pages with the phrase "nuclear disarmament."

CIAO also supports wildcard searching (*) for single terms, thus disarm* will return: “disarm,” “disarmament,”“disarmaments,” “disarmed,” “disarming,” etc. Wildcard searching is not available for phrases, such as: foreign diplom*. CIAO also supports “?” string. “O?EC” will return documents containing: “OPEC” and “OEEC.”

Search results will: