Electronic Highways

The United Nations Online

Need to add an international dimension to your research paper? Interested in finding out more about contemporary topics such as land mines, international trade, human rights, peacekeeping, the International Criminal Court, the rights of women and children, or the state of indigenous peoples worldwide? These and many other issues are the focus of the work of the United Nations. Locating UN documents and publications is now easier because of their growing availability online.

The United Nations homepage is useful for finding selected UN materials from the last few years and for full-text searching of certain groups of documents. Broad subject areas on the opening screen include Peace and Security, International Law, Economic and Social Development, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. Additional buttons offer other access points. It is necessary to click on each button to discover what is included in the category. For example, after clicking on "General Information," many diverse choices appear, including CyberSchoolBus, presenting curriculum ideas, classroom resources, interactive educational games and information on the Model UN.

If you feel intimidated by the vast array of UN documents published, then United Nations Documentation: Research Guide is a good place to begin. It provides a well-organized overview of, and links to, different types of documents and publications issued by the UN (e.g., reports, resolutions, meeting records, sales publications and press releases). The UN documents' symbols are demystified and basic reference tools are described.

Human Rights is one choice in the Research Guide under the category "Special Topics," providing information and links to UN bodies working in the area. A link to the Treaty Bodies Database allows one to locate state party reports for particular conventions. This can be a valuable resource for researching the human-rights situation in a specific country.

Another "special topic" in the Research Guide is International Law. Links are provided for various international courts and tribunals, as well as principal legal bodies of the UN. The United Nations Treaty Series Database, which one must register to use, also can be found here. It contains the full text of many treaties deposited with the UN and selected status information.

The United Nations Scholars' Workstation, created by the Yale University Library and the Social Sciences Statistical Laboratory, is another useful site. It is a well-developed, well-organized guide to UN sources, both official and unofficial. It includes collections of texts, finding aids, data sets, maps and pointers to print and electronic information. Research approaches include Internet access by UN organizational structure, by research topic, and by geographic area.

Networked and attached to a high-speed printer in the Law Library is UNBIS Plus on CD-ROM. UNBIS Plus starts coverage in 1979, is updated quarterly, and includes bibliographic access to UN documents, non-UN materials, and speeches, as well as access to the full text of resolutions and to voting records.

Finally, don't forget the Law Library houses the most complete set of UN documents (beginning with 1945) in Western New York.

For assistance in connecting to the World Wide Web, contact the CIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Austin Booth and Nina Cascio, University Libraries