Document Symbols : United Nations Documentation
Definitions
Document Symbols
Official Records
Sales Numbers
List of Sales Publication Categories
Definitions
The following definitions come from "Regulations for the Control and Limitation of Documentation: Addendum, Distribution of documents, meeting records, official records and publications,"
Document
"A document is a text submitted to a principal organ or a subsidiary organ of the United Nations for consideration by it, usually in connection with item(s) on its agenda." (para. 2)
UN Publication
"The term 'United Nations publication' refers to any written material which is issued by or for the United Nations to the general public, normally under the authorization of the Publications Board." (para. 4)
Official Records
"The Official Records are a series of printed publications relating to the proceedings of the principal organs of the United Nations or certain United Nations conferences; they include verbatim or summary records of the meetings of the organ concerned, annexes and supplements." (para. 5)
Document Symbols
Basics of Symbols
A symbol serves as a unique identifier for a United Nations document. Each symbol is composed of numbers and letters which do not give any significant indication of the subject of a document. All language versions of a document carry the same symbol.
Structure of Symbols
First component
Usually, the first component indicates the organ to which the document is being submitted or the organ that is issuing the document:
A/- |
General Assembly |
S/- |
Security Council |
E/- |
Economic and Social Council |
ST/- |
Secretariat |
Some bodies have a special series symbol that does not reflect the parent organ. For example:
CRC/C/- |
Committee on the Rights of the Child |
DP/- |
United Nations Development Programme |
TD/- |
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development |
UNEP/- |
United Nations Environment Programme |
Second component
Secondary and tertiary components indicate subsidiary bodies:
-/AC. .../- |
Ad hoc committee |
-/C. .../- |
Standing, permanent, or main committee |
-/CN. .../- |
Commission |
-/CONF. .../- |
Conference |
-/GC. .../- |
Governing council |
-/PC/. .../- |
Preparatory committee |
-/SC. .../- |
Subcommittee |
-/Sub. .../- |
Subcommission |
-/WG. .../- |
Working group |
Special components
Special components reflect the nature of the document:
-/CRP. ... |
Conference room paper |
-/INF/- |
Information series (e.g., lists of participants) |
-/L. ... |
Limited distribution (i.e., generally draft documents) |
-/NGO/- |
Statements by non-governmental organizations |
-/PET/- |
Petitions |
-/PRST/- |
Statements by the President of the Security Council |
-/PV. ... |
Verbatim records of meetings (i.e., proces-verbaux) |
-/R. ... |
Restricted distribution; restricted access (unless subsequently derestricted) |
-/RES/- |
Resolutions |
-/SR. ... |
Summary records of meetings |
-/WP. ... |
Working papers |
Final component
The final component, appearing as a suffix to a symbol, reflects modifications to the original text:
-/Add. ... |
Addendum |
-/Amend. ... |
Alteration, by decision of a competent authority, of a portion of an adopted formal text |
-/Corr. ... |
Corrigendum (which may not apply to all language versions) |
-/Rev. ... |
Revision (replacing texts previously issued) |
-/Summary |
Summarized version |
-/-* |
Reissuance of a document for technical reasons |
Session or year component
Many document symbols now include sessional or year elements, usually following the components that indicate the body. This was not the case prior to 1976 when the General Assembly began this practice. Other organs adopted similar practices. Subsidiary bodies generally follow the practice of the parent organ.
The General Assembly began to incorporate the session number into the symbols of its documents in 1976, at its 31st session (e.g., A/31/99).
In 1978, the Economic and Social Council began incorporating the year into the symbols of its documents (e.g., E/1978/99).
The Security Council began doing the same in 1994 (e.g., S/1994/99), with the exception of resolutions and meeting records.
Examples
A/64/1 |
General Assembly, 64th session, document no. 1 |
A/CONF.157/PC/63/Add.4 |
General Assembly, World Conference on Human Rights, Preparatory Committee, document no. 63, addendum no. 4 |
E/CN.4/Sub.2/2003/38/Rev.2 |
Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, year: 2003, document no. 38, revision no. 2 |
Guides to Symbols
The following publication identifies committees, commissions, etc., by their document series symbols -- and vice versa:
ST/LIB/SER.B/5/Rev.5
United Nations Document Series Symbols, 1946-1996
New York : UN, 1998
viii, 764 p.
(Sales No.: 98.I.6)
(Bibliographical Series/Dag Hammarskjöld Library; No. 5/Rev.5)
Date of Document
Several dates may be printed on masthead documents.
Regulations
General Assembly resolution 46/190 of 20 December 1991, requests "that each official document carries on its front page and in an appropriate manner the dates concerning the following stages of the documentation process: issuance by the substantive Department; completion of the translation into the specific language; printing; issuance."
Pursuant to this mandate, an editorial directive provides the regulations for the issuance date of documents (ST/CS/SER.A/35). The regulations apply to parliamentary documents excluding meeting records.
Below symbol
The date of issuance by the substantive department is found below the symbol of a masthead document: this date does not reflect the date of publication of the document itself. It is the date the document is registered and its processing (i.e., translation, editing, word processing and printing) starts. This is the date commonly used as the date of imprint.
Near job number
Documents have a job number and barcode printed in the lower left corner of the first page. Next to the job number a date in a 6-digit format (dd-mm-yy) appears. This indicates the date on which the processing of the document was completed. Depending on the length of the document, there may be a large gap between the registration date and the end-of-processing date:
Document Symbol |
Title of Document |
Date below the Symbol |
End of Processing Date |
|---|---|---|---|
A/55/100 |
Annotated preliminary list of items to be included in the provisional agenda of the fifty-fifth session of the General Assembly |
15 June 2000 |
250800 = |
A/S-19/29 |
Report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Whole of the Nineteenth Special Session [of the General Assembly for the purpose of an overall review and appraisal of the implementation of Agenda 21] |
27 June 1997 |
060897 =6 Aug. 1997 |
A/48/824- |
Letter from the United Republic of Tanzania [transmitting the Rwanda Peace Agreement] |
23 Dec. 1993 |
070294 = |
Issuance
The date of issuance is defined as the date the document is listed in the Journal of the United Nations. Since it is difficult to investigate when a document might have been listed, the date below the symbol is used as the date of imprint. The UN Library follows this convention in its printed indices and online databases.
Resolutions
For resolutions in masthead documents, be careful not to confuse the date below the symbol with the date of adoption of the resolution.
The date of adoption of General Assembly resolutions is found at the end of the resolution.
The date of adoption for Security Council resolutions is found after the title.
In the bibliographic products of the UN Library, the registration date is recorded in the imprint field whereas the adoption date appears in a note field:
Bibliographic record for document A/RES/52/91 (masthead version of General Assembly resolution 52/91 of 12 December 1997) in UNBISnet |
|
UN Document Symbol: A/RES/52/91 |
Official Records
Official Records constitute the primary documents submitted to or issued by the principal UN organs at a given session or during a particular year.
They are identified on the title page as Official Records and consist of meeting records; resolutions; reports of major organs, committees and commissions, budget and financial reports, and reprints of other important documents. Cumulations of the resolutions and all reports are each issued as a separately numbered "Supplement." The supplements are comprehensively listed in UN-I-QUE).
In the Official Document System (ODS), supplements to the Official Records sometimes have (SUPP) after the symbol.
Prior to documents being available electronically, important documents were issued sessionally as "Annexes" to the Official Records. For the General Assembly, the Annexes are organized by agenda item number. For the Security Council, there were quarterly "Supplements" listed by document symbol.
Official Records are also produced for some of the major UN conferences.
Highly specialized indexes, the Indexes to Proceedings, are available to facilitate the work of researchers attempting to identify both masthead documents and Official Records of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and Trusteeship Council. Researchers may also consult UNBISnet, the online catalog of the UN Library in New York. UNBISnet provides links to the full text of recent documentation.
Sales Numbers
Sales publications are UN publications of general or broad interest; they are offered for sale in order to give them the widest possible distribution outside the UN system. A sales number is a unique identifier composed of a combination of letters, arabic numbers and roman numbers.
Components
Sales numbers have a letter, arabic numerals, roman numerals, and another arabic numeral.
The first component (a letter) indicates the language of the publication; the second (two arabic numerals) indicates the year of publication; the third (roman numerals), the subject of the publication or the issuing body in some instances, and the final component (an arabic numeral) is a sequential number with has no special meaning.
For more information about the third component, see the list of Sales Publication Categories. United Nations Publications sells and distributes official documents, publications and electronic products of the United Nations and its agencies.
Example
E.95.XIII.12 = World urbanization prospects: the 1994 revision (i.e., an English language title published in 1995 relating to demography)
Sales Publication Categories
Broad subject categories or issuing bodies are indicated by the following roman numerals:
0 |
Geneva Publications |
I |
General Information and Reference |
II.A |
Business, Economics, Science and Technology |
II.B |
Economic Development |
II.C |
World Economy |
II.D |
Trade, Finance and Commerce |
II.E |
Economic Commission for Europe (ECE) |
II.F |
Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) |
II.G |
Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC) |
II.H |
Public Administration |
II.K |
Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) |
II.L |
Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) |
III.A |
United Nations University (UNU) |
III.B |
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) |
III.C |
International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW) |
III.D |
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) |
III.E |
United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) |
III.H |
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) |
III.M |
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) |
III.N |
United Nations Inter-regional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) |
III.P |
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) |
III.Q |
United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) |
III.R |
United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) |
III.S |
International Organization for Migration (IOM) |
III.T |
International Trade Centre (UNCTAD/WTO) |
III.U |
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) |
III.W |
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) |
III.Y |
United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) |
IV |
Social Questions |
V |
International Law |
VII |
Security Council and Peacekeeping Operations |
VIII |
Transport and Communications |
IX |
Disarmament and Atomic Energy |
X |
International Administration |
XI |
Narcotic Drugs (including United Nations Office on Drug and Crime - UNODC) |
XIII |
Demography |
XIV |
Human Rights (including Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - OHCHR) |
XV |
United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) |
XVI |
Public Finance and Fiscal Questions |
XVII |
International Statistics |
XX |
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) |
L |
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) |
LI |
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) |
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