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United Nations: Locating U.N. Documents

Describes sources and methods for doing research on the main bodies of the United Nations

Using Your Web Browser to Locate Documents by Known Document Symbol

http://undocs.org/

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[Document Symbol]

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Document


The document symbol appears in the upper right hand corner of the retrieved document.


 

AccessUN

AccessUN is a commercially produced online index covering UN documents and publications issued from 1946 to the present. It is  produced by the Readex corporation as a finding aid for UN documents in the READEX microfiche collection. It is the only online index that covers older UN documents not yet incorporated by UNBISnet.

AccessUn indexes masthead documents, official records, sales publications, limited and restricted documents, and documents emanating from sessional and standing committees, functional commissions, conferences and regional bodies. It also indexes UN periodicals, and bilateral and multilateral treaties contained in the United Nations Treaty Series. (Beginning with vol. 925, treaty records include subsequent treaty action instruments, e.g. ratifications.)

Some full text documents are appended to their respective bibliographic records, including SC resolutions (1974 -) and GA and ECOSOC resolutions (1983 -).

AccessUN permits the user to search in a variety of fields, including subject, title, text, author, session/agenda, document number, sales number, and country. Searches can combine fields with AND, OR, and NOT operators, and can be limited by document type, date, and whether or not records include links to full text.

For tips on searching for treaty records in AccessUn, see here.

UN Info Quest (UN-I-QUE)

UN-I-Que is a database that tracks primarily the production of U.N. material of a recurrent nature. It contains more than 6,500 reference records for annual/sessional reports of committees and commissions, annual publications, reports periodically or irregularly issued, reports of major conferences, and statements in general debate. Each reference record includes a searchable heading identifying the document series together with a unique, five-digit record number beginning with the letter "R." You can create a durable link to a UN-I-Que referene record by appending the record number to the URL.

The individual entries under each heading include applicable bibliographic information, such as document symbol and/or sales number, publication date, session specification and location in one of the U.N Official Records series.

For more information on searching UN-I-Que, see here.

U.N. Bibliographic Information System (UNBISnet)

UNBISnet is composed of three databases of document records, and is a good index for researching a topic or for finding a specific document.

 

The Bibliographic Records index is the largest, and contains:

  • Records for UN publications issued from 1979 to the present
  • Retrospective records of select documents
  • Masthead document records from 1992-present, with ongoing retrospective additions
  • Records of all resolutions of GA, SC, TC, ECOSOC from 1946-present

The Bibliographic Records index includes a direct link from catalog record to ODS document.

 

The Voting Records index contains:

  • Records of all resolutions of General Assembly and Security Council

The Voting Records database includes a direct link to the full text of resolutions.

 

The Index to Speeches database contains records for:

  • General Assembly 1983-Present
  • Security Council 1983-Present
  • Economic and Social Council 1983-Present
  • Trusteeship Council 1982 - 1994

The Index to Speeches includes a link to the full text of documents for:

  • Most GA from 1986-presen
  • SC from 1983-present
  • ECOSOC from 1994-present

UNBISnet supports both keyword and browse searches. For tips on search strategy, see here.

U.N. Official Document System (ODS)

ODS is the official U.N. document repository. ODS is a useful index for conducting full-text searches of resolutions and speeches.It contains all U.N. official documents and masthead documents, 1993 -. It also contains the following:

  • most General Assembly documents (A/...), 1988 -.
  • all Security Council documents (S/...), 1946 -.
  • allL UNCITRAL (A/CN.9/…) 1967 -.
  • most ILC (A/CN.4/…) 1948 -.
  • most Legal Committee (A/C.6/…) 1986 -.

ODS also contains all GA, SC, ECOSOC, and TC resolutions, 1946-1993, in their Official Records form, searchable from the Advanced Search screen.

ODS also contains the Daily Journal, 1996 -, which includes information about upcoming meetings, a summary of official meetings convened only a day or so earlier, UN document symbols of major documents that served (or will serve) as basis for the discussions, and links (1994 -) to the text of documents cited or listed.

ODS does not include sales publications, the UN Treaty Series, or subscription periodicals (except the Daily Journal).

ODS has both a Simple Search and Advanced Search interface. The Advanced Search interrface permits searching by document type, subject, title word(s), date, session, agaenda item, and document symbol. Document symbol searches support both right and left truncation. The Simple Search interface supports searches by symbol (with right truncation only) and by date. The Simple Search does not search the resolutions database.

Both search types support full text searches. There are two types of full text search available. First, the user can select one of three pre-set forms from a drop-down menu ("find this phrase," "find any of the words,"  "find all the words"). Second, the user can select "use boolean operators," and condut a more complex search useing AND, OR, NOT, and SENTENCE (proximity) operators.

For help constructing searches and detailed examples of search types click here.