Embassy of the United States

Information Resource Center

Please Note: The American Cultural Center is unavailable to the public until further notice.

Research Question? Ask IRC

Welcome to the Information Resource Center (IRC) of the U.S. Embassy. The IRC has access to a tremendous amount of electronic information on U.S. topics, including legislative developments, foreign and domestic policy, and social, economic and political issues.  Through a wide variety of online databases, we provide our clients with current and authoritative information. 
 
We invite you to visit the IRC during working hours and use our facilities to conduct online research.


Weekly American Idiom on your Cell Phone:

We are pleased to announce a new electronic service called “Weekly Idioms.”
Contact us to receive a weekly American idiom SMS on your cell phone. 

All you need to do is to subscribe with us, by providing your name, job title and cell phone number. 

The idiom messages will be short, consisting of the idiom, its meaning in English, and a sample sentence. Here’s a sample text: 

Today’s idiom
“big time”
A lot, very much
“He really owes her big time for everything she has done for him.”

IRC Monthly Electronic Newsletter:
Latest newsletter: October/November 2009
Archieved Newsletters.

Subscribe to receive our newsletter on your email every month.



Outreach Program:

Our outreach program includes:
 
1. The creation of specialized information packages in response to institutional or individual inquiries.
 
2. Daily electronic distribution of news, articles and research papers on a wide range of topics such as political, economic, social and cultural issues. Interested Syrian professionals can join this service by subscribing to our mailing list to start receiving materials in their chosen field of interest. You will also be subscribed to our IRC monthly newsletter.
 
3. E-Docs alert service: provides an annotation and URL for reports, studies and papers. It includes documents from:

(1) U.S. executive agencies and the Congressional branch; (2) think tanks;
(3) professional associations; and (4) international organization.

 
IRC will send you these annotations classified by themes, with the URL to access the full report. If it is inconvenient for you to print out long reports, IRC invites you to visit us and get the full text report in hard copy free of charge.
 

Following are the online databases available at the IRC

Lexis-Nexis: is a legislative service that provides on-line access to U.S. federal legislation using a variety of reference and full-text databases.

GaleNet: incorporates 15 of the Gale Group's general reference databases, including Encyclopedia of Associations. Users can access more than 320,000 directory entries for associations, research centers, publishers, print publications, databases, and television and radio stations.

InfoTrac OneFile: provides full-text articles and abstracts on wide-ranging topics, including business, current events, economics, education, environmental issues, health care, law, literature and art, politics, science, social science, sports and technology. Biography Resource Center offers biographies from Gale Group sources in combination with full-text articles from hundreds of periodicals.

Federal News Service (FNS): provides transcripts of testimony, briefings, press conferences and congressional hearings with questions and answers. FNS also produces a daybook that details significant events in Washington as well as cabinet officer schedules.

EBSCOhost: is a collection of online journal databases containing thousands of journal articles covering a wide variety of topics. This multi-disciplinary database provides full text for more than 4,500 journals, including full text for more than 3,700 peer-reviewed titles. PDF back files to 1975 or further are available for well over one hundred journals, and searchable cited references are provided for 1,000 titles.

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IRC Damascus on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Damascus-Syria/The-American-Cultural-Center-in-Damascus/48261722648

See you there!   

IRC Staff
The IRC staff provides quick reference assistance and research, utilizing the foregoing print and digital sources. Queries are accepted by telephone, 3391 4118 or 3391 4195, email:ircdamas@state.gov, fax 3321 456 or in person (by appointment) during working hours.

Information Resource Center training and demonstration sessions on the electronic resources can be arranged for groups or individuals upon request. We especially welcome requests from NGOs, the media, business organizations, government and university faculty.

IRC Working Hours
Sunday-Thursday, 12:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.

Please note: Queries regarding visas, American Citizen Services issues, or consular affairs cannot be answered. For these matters please check the Visas and Consular Affairs page of this web site.