United Nations

Developed in cooperation with the library community, Access UN serves primarily as an ongoing Web-based index to more than 500,000 current and archived United Nations documents and publications. Access UN also provides the full text or links to the full text of more than 35,000 of these documents and publications.

Access UN benefits both researchers concerned with international economic, social, cultural and humanitarian issues as well as Model UN participants preparing resolutions and position papers. Peace and security, world hunger, human rights, economic development, the environment and atomic energy are among the many topics addressed in depth by the United Nations.

Indexing of various documents by each UN body 
Readex indexes the documents from the six main bodies of the United Nations—the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Trusteeship Council, Secretariat and International Court of Justice. Masthead documents (formerly known as mimeographed documents), official records, limited and restricted documents, sales publications and documents emanating from sessional and standing committees, functional commissions, conferences and regional bodies are the basis of this ongoing index. 

Additional resolutions, records and links 
Full-text resolutions from the General Assembly, Security Council and the Economic and Social Council are appended to their respective bibliographic citations. These documents include resolutions from the General Assembly (1981-present), the Security Council (1974-present), and the Economic and Social Council (1982-present). Also, selected Provisional Verbatim and Summary Records documents (1990-present), which contain voting records of General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, have been added to the database. Finally, Access UN provides links to full-text documents residing at UN Websites.

Segments offering comprehensive coverage 
Access UN is available in comprehensive date-range segments, including: 1991-present, 1966-present and 1946-present.

Established in 1945 by 51 countries, the stated purpose of the United Nations is to preserve peace through international cooperation. Today, the United Nations, worldwide in scope, consists of 191 member-nations. For researching international issues, United Nations documents and publications are often essential. While knowledgeable scholars expect comprehensive coverage, methods of acquiring and accessing current and retrospective UN documentation may be difficult. Readex has created solutions tailored to meet the needs of diverse researchers—from undergraduates to doctoral students to Model UN participants.

Three collections of essential UN documentation
Readex’s collections of United Nations Documents and supporting databases are available from the founding of the United Nations to the present time. These collections are ideal for researching international issues—from world hunger to world peace—and for gaining an understanding of international relations as they exist today given the events, issues and trends chronicled in retrospective portions of the collections. Readex provides United Nations Documents on durable, space-saving microfiche in three versions:

• Comprehensive Collection—contains virtually every document, including “Limited” and “Restricted” documents, from the main UN bodies: the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, Secretariat, Trusteeship Council and International Court of Justice.
• Law Library Collection—features official records and working documents from five of the six principal organs (Secretariat publications are not included). Also included are documents from ad hoc and expert committees such as the International Law Commission and the UN Commission on International Trade Law.
• The Abridged Collection—designed for smaller libraries, it includes mastheads and official records from the General Assembly (regular, special and emergency sessions), the Security Council, Economic and Social Council, the Trusteeship Council and the International Court of Justice..

A valuable index to UN documents and publications 
Use of all collections is enhanced by the availability of effective retrieval tools. Regardless of the source of the documents, the index to United Nations Documents and other publications from Readex is a valuable resource. It is available both on CD-ROM and online. The online version of the index, titled Access UN, contains not only all citations included on the CD-ROM version, but also links to full-text documents residing at United Nations Websites. There are versions available of both CD-ROM and online indexes that cover current documents or historical collections.