UN Documentation

As a general rule, the following material can be discarded:

     (a) Masthead versions of documents that are reproduced in the Official Records or in printed proceedings;
     (b) Once a revision is issued, the basic document and its addenda, corrigenda, amendments and excerpts;
     (c) Duplicate copies of documents bearing more than one symbol (only one copy needs to be kept if a cross reference is placed under the other symbols);
     (d) Masthead documents of conferences, meetings, symposia, etc., subsequently reissued as sales publications;
     (e) Weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc., issues of publications for which a yearly cumulation has been issued;
     (f) Masthead documents that are subsequently reproduced, such as documents of the International Law Commission (series A/CN.4/- and A/CN.4/SR.-) later appearing in the Yearbook of the International Law Commission (A/CN.4/SER.A/-).

Libraries with ODS access

The first priority for sorting and retention of official documentation should go to publications which are not on the ODS and second priority to official records, which are on the ODS but are often long and contain appended material which is more convenient to consult in print format. Otherwise, parliamentary documents available on the ODS could be disposed of, with the possible exception of very long documents, particularly those containing appendices in image format, which may be time-consuming to print out.

Non-UN serial publications

We include here a short general recommendation on the retention policy which should be applied to externally published serial publications:

     Annual, bi-annual publications - 1 year
       There are two exceptions:
          (a) statistical yearbooks, which DHL keeps for 3 years in the Statistical branch library and later transfers to the Main Collection where they are kept for an additional period of 7 years;
          (b) juridical yearbooks are kept in DHL Legal branch for 5 years;

     Semi-annual & quarterly publications - 2 years;

     Weekly & monthly published titles - 1  year, or until they are replaced by annual cumulations. If annual cumulations are not available, the retention period should be 2 years.

     Official gazettes are kept in DHL's collections permanently (although it is currently reviewing its entire collection of official gazettes, and most likely the new retention period will be just 2 years).