When focusing upon the work of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and Trusteeship Council, researchers have at their disposal a series of highly specialized indexes to facilitate their work. These indexes are basically divided into two parts:

(1) a comprehensive subject index to all the documents (reports, letters, meeting records, resolutions, etc.) issued by the body in question during a particular session/year; and

(2) an index to speeches delivered before the forum in question during a particular session/year.

Over time, these indexes have become highly refined research tools incorporating many enhancements which were not available in earlier years.

A subject entry in any of the indexes basically tells a bibliographic story, the story of an agenda item or, in the case of the Security Council, a matter considered by it. The story begins by cutting to the heart of the matter with a listing of the most significant documents: i.e., reports. General documents (usually letters in which Governments exchange views) immediately follow. As the plot develops, we find a listing of proposals (i.e., draft resolutions or decisions), followed by a listing of meeting records reflecting when the item/matter was discussed. In most instances (but not always), the story concludes with the adoption of a document expressing the will of the body and constituting the end of the subject entry for the session/year. This document could be, for example, a resolution setting policies and requesting follow-up at a future session or a decision taking note of a previously submitted report or deferring action on an item. Of course, this is an oversimplifcation which excludes specialized features unique to some of the indexes (e.g., a listing of Presidential statements in the Index to Proceedings of the Security Council) but it gives a good idea of the highly structured approach taken by the indexes as they are published today.

The Indexes to Proceedings have many additional special features, among them:

(1) A voting chart (in the case of the General Assembly available since 1975; in the case of the Security Council, since 1976);

(2) A table indicating the specific dates on which meetings were held;

(3) A numerical title (subject, in the case of the Security Council) listing of resolutions adopted during the particular session/year.

If your research relates to any of the four above-mentioned organs, it will be well worthwhile exploring in-depth the additional special features incorporated into the Indexes to Proceedings.

UNDOC and its successor, the United Nations Documents Index (online version: UNBISnet), are global indexes of all UN documents indexed by the Dag Hammarskjold Library and the UN Library in Geneva since 1979. They provide broad subject access to an extensive category of documents issued world-wide by numerous UN organs and subsidiary bodies (General Assembly, Security Council, UNEP, UNCTAD, UNU, UNDP, ECLAC, ESCAP, etc.). Unlike the Indexes to Proceedings whose contents are confined to documents issued for a particular session/year, the year in which a document is published does not necessarily correlate with the year a particular issue of UNDOC was published. (For example, a 1987 document may be indexed in a 1989 issue of UNDOC.) This, however, is common to almost every index of a generic nature.

UNDOC was first issued in 1979 and ceased publication in 1996. Its successor, the United Nations Documents Index, began publication in 1998. The United Nations Documents Checklist covering the period between the cessation of UNDOC and the issuance of the new index (October 1996-December 1997) was published in March 1999 and carries the symbol ST/LIB/SER.M/120-ST/LIB/SER.M/CUM.18. For research requirements predating 1979, UNDI and UNDEX, predecessors to UNDOC, provide a similar approach.

UNBISnet is the primary online index to United Nations documentation published since 1979 (or earlier for selected major documents) and indexed by the Dag Hammarskjöld Library at United Nations Headquarters in New York or the Library of the UN Office in Geneva. It includes the catalogue of the non-UN collections of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library and provides access to detailed voting records of resolutions adopted by the General Assembly (17th session onwards) and the Security Council (since 1946). Citations to speeches made in the General Assembly, Security Council and Economic and Social Council from 1983 onwards (1982 in the case of the Trusteeship Council) are also searchable in the database.

The advantage of UNBISnet, compared to products in printed or CD-ROM formats, is its timeliness: each evening, the material indexed during the day is loaded onto the system and becomes immediately accessible to researchers world-wide. An additional advantage is that UNBISnet links to the full text of recent documentation originating from UN bodies worldwide in all six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). The full text of resolutions adopted by the major organs (General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council), going back to 1946, can also be retrieved through UNBISnet. The Index to Speeches links to the full text of recent speeches; the Voting Records database supplies the full text of the cited resolutions.

UN-I-QUE is the Dag Hammarskjold Library's first database launched into cyberspace. It is an electronic research tool that serves as a user-friendly guide to the symbols/sales numbers of tens of thousands of selected documents and publications from 1946 to the present.

Among the symbols which can be easily traced through UN-I-QUE are those of resolutions granting countries membership in the United Nations as well as those designating international years and decades; speeches in the general debate of the General Assembly (e.g., 1st session); sessional reports of major committees/commissions and their terms of reference (e.g., Commission on Human Rights); reports prepared by Special Rapporteurs in the fields of human rights and international law; reports prepared by the Joint Inspection Unit and the Office of Internal Oversight Services; periodic reports submitted by countries in compliance with human rights instruments; reports of United Nations conferences; major documents relating to current peacekeeping operations.

The Official Document System of the United Nations (ODS), a full-text retrieval system for United Nations documents and official records, offers two main search areas: "UN Documents" and "Resolutions". The "UN Documents" area gives access to the formally published parliamentary documents of the United Nations (i.e., with masthead denoting the name of the body and document symbol) in all six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish). Not included are:

• sales publications;
  
• United Nations Treaty Series, which authorized users can access at the UN Treaty Collection site;
  
• press releases and press briefings, which are posted at the UN News Centre;
  
• public information materials;
  
• most informally published working papers without masthead (conference room papers, "non-papers", etc.).

The "Resolutions" area provides access to the resolutions of the major UN organs (General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council) back to 1946 in all official languages. The indexing of the material is based upon relevant data from the first page of the document (UN body concerned, session, agenda item number, document symbol, language, date, title, etc.). In addition, subject access is provided by descriptors from the UNBIS Thesaurus. The system also allows full-text searching in all six languages.

The ODS, originally a joint undertaking of the duty stations in New York and Geneva, started as a pilot project in 1992. Addis Ababa, Bangkok, Beirut, Nairobi, Santiago and Vienna joined the system at a later point. Each duty station is responsible for inputting material produced locally. The short-term objective is to bring all UN duty stations fully online so that UN documents issued anywhere can be accessed by users world-wide immediately upon release. A longer-range goal is to expand coverage retrospectively to 1946 and to consolidate access to all documents issued by the United Nations since its inception. The UN Library in New York is, for example, scanning older parliamentary documents on a continuous basis and uploading them to the ODS. The current focus of the Library's digitization programme is on General Assembly and Security Council documentation.

Prepared and maintained by the Department of Public Information (DPI), Dag Hammarskjöld Library (DHL) . Comments as well as suggestions for further additions/enhancements may be directed to the Dag Hammarskjöld Library..