United Nations Research

Updated Dec. 18, 2007; PRJ.

Overview

The United Nations (UN) was created in 1945 by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations. Currently, there are 191 member nations. The UN has six main organs: the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, Secretariat, and International Court of Justice. These main bodies may have subsidiary bodies: committees, commissions, or working groups.

The UN system includes independent organizations, called "specialized agencies." These include the International Maritime Organization and the World Intellectual Property Organization. For more information on researching specialized agencies, see the Gallagher guide on Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs).

Generally

Research strategies include:

• gathering background information
• checking the Law Library and UW Libraries catalogs
• talking with Gallagher Law Library and UW Government Publications reference staff and
• searching official and unofficial web resources.

The UN is a large and complicated organization, so researchers may find a bit of background helpful. A visual image of the complex the UN system may be helpful. See also:

Basic Facts about the United Nations. JZ4970.B37, current at Reference Office
A handbook that summarizes UN organizational structure and activities.

The UN in Brief explains UN structures and functions.

Edmund Jan Osmańczyk, The Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements, 3d ed. KZ4968.O86 2003 at Reference Area
This four-volume compendium focuses on how the UN and its institutions work.

Yearbook of the United Nations, 1946/47-date. JZ4947.U55 at Classified Stack
Detailed account of annual activities. Publication is slow.

Research Guides

Marci Hoffman & Mary Rumsey, Researching the United Nations. Developed for the University of Minnesota Law Library collection.

Marci Hoffman & Paul Zarins, ASIL Guide to Electronic Resources for International Law: United Nations. An annotated list of official and other UN websites, CD-ROM products, and commercial online services.

United Nations Scholar's Workstation at Yale University links to a variety of research tools. Lists websites by research topic, UN organizational structure, and geographic area.

Linda Tashbrook, Researching the United Nations: Finding the Organization's Internal Resource Trails describes approaches for finding people, issues, entities, and treaties.

Documents

The United Nations produces an overwhelming number of documents each year. There are several types of UN documents, most notably sales publications, official records, and mimeograph/masthead documents. The Law Library selectively collects sales publications and official records on legal and law-related topics such as human rights, law of the sea, and environmental law. These can be found by searching the Law Library catalog.

Full-text of many documents may be found on UN and UN specialized agency websites:

• United Nations (main site)
• Official Web Site Locator for the United Nations System of Organizations
• UN Documentation Centre includes major bodies: General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, Security Council, and Secretariat.
• International Governmental Organizations, from Northwestern University Library.
• International Agencies and Information on the Web, from the University of Michigan Documents Center.

The Government Publications Division of the UW Libraries is a UN depository and receives most of the official records and working documents. These documents are invaluable to the researcher, but can be difficult to access and slow to arrive. They are not accessible through the UW Libraries Catalog but through a variety of print and electronic indexes, most notably AccessUN. The collection is organized by UN call number. Reference assistance is available from Government Publications staff.

• AccessUN, 1966-date, available through the UW Libraries Research Databases (UW Restricted), is an index of UN official records, resolutions, reports, proceedings, studies, and documents from selected specialized agencies. Includes links to selected full-text. UW Libraries subscribes to a microfiche collection of documents indexed, housed in Government Publications.
• The United Nations Documentation: Research Guide provides an overview of the types of UN documents. Includes guide to document symbols.
• UN Info Quest (UN-I-QUE) provides quick access to symbols and sales numbers of tens of thousands of selected UN documents from 1946 to date. Does not give full bibliographic citation. Created by the UN Reference Librarians to answer frequently asked questions.

Specialized agency documents may not be distributed through the UN depository program or appear in the standard indexes. UW Government Publications collects some and maintains card files for each agency. Many specialized agencies post documents on the Internet.