The changing image of the UN Library.

The changing image of the UN Library

A poster hanging in the office of a staff member of the Dag Hammarskjold Library at UN Headquarters in New York pictures several people on a safari, seemingly lost. The caption reads: "It's an information jungle out there, let your librarian by your guide." The poster, issued by the American Library Association, is indicative of new trends affecting libraries around the world.

"A library is no longer merely a storage place for books and documents", said Jakob Van Heijst, a native of The Netherlands, who has been Director of the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Library since August 1989. It's not only the central library at UN Headquarters, but also the co-ordinating library for the entire UN system. "The tendency everywhere", he continued, "is that the library is involved in the distribution of information. It serves as an all-around information service, providing institutions and organizations with all kinds of data."

Mr. Van Heijst said that in this day and age, having books or other material available on the premises is no longer the primary function of a library. Nowadays, the ability to locate neeced information, with the aid of the most modern technologies, is considered most important.

The Dag Hammarskjold Library--situated at the southern end of the 18-acre UN complex along Manhattan's East River--in the course of a year lends some 160,000 items and answers 85,000 reference queries, mostly from Permanent Missions and Secretariat staff.

Each year, it acquires some 422,000 items, including books, journals, magazines, maps and other materials. It also provides training for librarians from Member States, Missions and depository libraries, who come to New York to learn more about UN documentation by hands-on experience.

The Hammarskjold Library was established in 1946. In 1949, the General Assembly stated that the Library's primary function was to enable delegations, the Secretariat and other official groups of the Organization "to obtain, with the greatest possible speed, convenience and economy, library materials and information needed in the execution of their duties".

Before joining the UN, Mr. Van Heijst was Director of the Royal Library at The Hague (the national library of the Netherlands) and Director of the Utrecht University Libraries. He has also written books and articles on history and library subjects, related particularly to organization and automation.

The UN Library is a very complicated system, Mr. Van Heijst notes, with much of its information scattered all over the world. In his view, the Librayr must obtain the information and transmit it to those who need it at the right time.

The Library is now in the process of creating an integrated "United Nationa Libraries Management Information System", with the goal of completion by 1993. It would provide multi-user capability and networking with other UN offices. The General Assembly has also apaproved an Optical Disc system for UN partiamentary documents.

The main task of the Library, Mr. Van Heijst said, is to index and store all UN documents to make them more accessible to the user. The majority of the Library's 140 staff members of 54 nationalities are involved in these two processes. Most of these documents are available in the six official languages of the UN.

The Library has loan arrangements with the New York Public Library and other metropolitan libraries, and is connected with external data bases on many different subjects. It provides access to most of the importnat newspapers and magazines in the United States through NEXIS, a newspaper data service. A user recently asked what had appeared in a particular newspaper over the past two years on a specific liberation movement, and some 100 refences were immediately supplied. "It's unbelievable how much facts we can get from the outside", Mr. Van Heijst said, "especially through telecommunication lines."

Also available on computer is data supplied via "Compact Disc/Read Only Memory" (CD/ROM) which stores more than half a million pages of text.

"Information is becoming an expensive article", he said, "and access to information is really decisive in many areas. A country which does not have the information it needs may fall behind in everything."

If the fees for telecommunications services are too high for a country, the Director suggests using CD/ROM. "We have to deliver documentation in such a way that it may be used everywhere. That may not always be easy, but the library must see to it that it is available." United Nations information centres are also major sources of information, particularly in the third world.

More and more, functions associated with libraries are being automated in an effort to improve existing services, broaden the spectrum of services and reach potential users. The United Nations Bibliographic Information System (UNBIS), which now services 39 missions in the New York area, is an on-line information system which offers bibliographic, factual, numeric, full text, support and authority control files. The system is operated by the UN Library in co-operation with the Electronic Services Division of the UN.

Mr. Van Heijst hopes that the Library, as the primary information centre at UN Headquarters, will be used more often by Secretariat staff and Missions. "We'd particularly like to inform everyone of all the services available and that our staff is always eager to help." In that jungle of information out there, let the UN Library be your guide.