Underusing UN information resources. (A Puzzling Picture).

United Nations information use presents a puzzling picture, especially in academia. Many information resources receive extraordinary use. In 2001, visitors to the main UN web site viewed an average of 500,000 HTML files daily. According to Mahbub Ahmad, Chief of the UN Website Section, that figure rose to 750,000 in 2002 and to 950,000 in the first two months of 2003. A significant portion of these page views originated in colleges and universities. However, many other digital and print UN sources are underutilized despite their quality and usefulness for research.

One of these is the Official Document System of the United Nations (ODS) which contains the full text of the vast majority of UN documents issued since 1993, as well as selected documents from previous years, making it one of the most important databases produced by any international governmental organization. However, many government document specialists in the United States report that patrons seldom use it. ODS is accessible only by username and password, which limits access, but this cannot fully explain the underutilization of this invaluable resource.

One can find many other examples of underuse. In early 2003, a professor teaching speech communication courses at a major North American university focused her students' attention on the debate concerning Iraq. Assignments required the use of supporting documentation, and the professor enlisted a librarian to help students locate appropriate sources. To make the process as convenient as possible, she created a web page with links to nine web sites and subscription databases, including two UN resources, demonstrated the use of each one and assisted students as they practised searching on their own. But only 5 of 84 students cited a UN document in any assignment, and most used web-based articles from the United States' popular press only. What are the roots of this problem?

A variety of factors contribute to the gap between the actual and potential use of UN information in academia. The most formidable is competition. In many nations, college and university libraries have invested heavily in online subscription databases, and a growing number of students and professors get most of their research information from these resources. In addition, many undergraduates have gravitated toward freely available but often unreliable web publications, accessed through web indexes and search engines.

Another obstacle is the narrow view of the United Nations created by the mainstream media. The Organization's efforts to maintain international peace and security are often front-page news, but its other work gets scant attention in many newspapers and news magazines.

As a result, the work of the UN Economic and Social Council, for example, is completely unknown to most undergraduates in the United States. This underrepresentation of major activities and important bodies fosters a limited view of the United Nations that leads vast numbers of potential users to underestimate it as a source of information.

The notion that UN sources are difficult to decipher is an additional barrier and, unfortunately, this perception is often justified. For example, masthead documents--the most abundant and diverse category of UN information resources--are written primarily for Member State delegations and the Organization's staff; and for this reason, their authors often assume that readers are familiar with UN processes. This assumption is evident even in the titles that are assigned. Take for example the document Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 9 of the Convention: Sixteenth periodic reports of States parties due in 2002: Addendum: Morocco. This is Morocco's report on its compliance with a treaty on racial discrimination, but its title gives no indication of its topic to the non-specialist. This deficiency is particularly damaging because the two factors most likely to lead undergraduates to seek a particular source are the expectation that it will be easy to find and to understand (Vicki Tolar Burton and Scott A. Chadwick, "Investigating the practices of student researchers: Patterns of Use and Criteria for Use of Internet and Library Sources," Computers and Composition 17 (2000), p. 321).

Finally, many patrons have difficulty determining whether particular UN sources are appropriate for their research. If a professor requires that students utilize only scholarly books and articles, is the use of UN masthead documents appropriate? This is a difficult issue because some documents in this category are comparable in quality to sales publications, while others are prepared with much less attention to detail and little editing.

Some of these problems are intractable. Competition will continue, and the mainstream media is unlikely to change its course. What then should be done to give UN information more prominence in the research of students and professors?

The United Nations should aggressively pursue improved intellectual access to masthead documents. In academic communities, users expect the title page to identify an item's personal or corporate author(s) and indicate its topic, but not all UN documents meet these fundamental criteria.

The existence of UN depository libraries is unknown to most students, faculty members and librarians. Depository librarians must counteract this lack of awareness by promoting their collections and services as widely as possible.

They must also identify courses in which UN information could be used and then promote awareness of specific resources among the appropriate instructors. This is important for two reasons: information use in every academic institution is driven primarily by its curriculum; and instructors are often unaware of UN information resources.

Educational institutions should provide tangible support for original undergraduate research on international affairs. The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College does this by offering travel grants for undergraduate research and conference presentations, funding a student-run journal that publishes articles by both undergraduates and professors, and providing grants for postgraduate research. John Cocklin, the Government Documents Librarian at Dartmouth, in a communication to me attributed much of the use of UN information at his library to Dickey Center programmes.

The attraction of great numbers of users to UN web sites and databases reflects extraordinary interest in the work of the Organization, but much higher levels of use can be achieved. It is important that this effort not be reduced to a technological endeavour; less tangible obstacles must also be confronted and overcome. Only a comprehensive approach can maximize the impact of UN information resources.

RELATED ARTICLE: United Nations Documentation: Research Guide

Indexes to Proceedings

When focusing upon the work of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and Trusteeship Council, researchers have at their disposal a comprehensive subject index to all the documents (reports, letters, meeting records, resolutions, etc.) issued by the body in question during a particular session/year, and an index to speeches delivered before the forum in question during a particular session/year.

The Indexes to Proceedings have many additional special features, among them: a voting chart; a table with specific meeting dates; and a numerical title (subject, in the case of the Security Council) listing of resolutions adopted during the particular session/year.

UNDOC/United Nations Documents Index

UNDOC and its successor, the United Nations Documents Index, are global indexes of all UN documents indexed by the Dag Hammarskjold Library and the UN Library in Geneva since 1979. They provide broad access to an extensive category of documents issued worldwide by numerous UN organs and subsidiary bodies.

UNBISnet

UNBISnet is the primary online index to United Nations documentation published since 1979 (or earlier for selected major documents) and indexed by the Dag Hammarskjold Library or the Library of the UN Office in Geneva. It includes the catalogue of non-UN collections of both libraries and provides access to detailed voting records of resolutions adopted by the General Assembly (38th session onwards) and the Security Council (since 1946). Citations to speeches made in the General Assembly, Security Council and Economic and Social Council from 1983 onwards (1982 in the case of the Trusteeship Council) ire also searchable.

UNBIS Plus on CD-ROM 

UNBIS Plus on CD-ROM, jointly published by the Dag Hammarskjold Library and Chadwyck-Healey, merges the online versions of several print products into a userfriendly search tool: UNDOC (as well as the United Nations Documents Index); the Indexes to Proceedings, (including the voting record file), and the Indexes to Speeches, the UNBIS Thesaurus, United Nations Document Series Symbols; plus heretofore unpublished files (geographical names, name authority, full text of resolutions, etc.).

RLIN 

Subscribers to the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) may access bibliographic records produced by the Dag Hammarskjold Library through this system. New and updated records from the UN Library are added to RLIN on a weekly basis.

UNI-QUE

UN-I-QUE is the Dag Hammarskjold Library's first database launched into cyberspace. It serves as a user-friendly guide to the symbols/sales numbers of tens of thousands of selected documents and publications from 1946 to the present.

United Nations Official Document System (ODS)

The United Nations Official Document System (ODS), a subscription-based retrieval system for UN documents and official records, offers two main search areas: "UN Documents and "Resolutions". The "UN Documents" area gives access to the formally published parliamentary documents of the United Nations (i.e., with masthead denoting the name of the body and document symbol) in all six official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish).

For further information visit: http://www.on.org/depts/dhl/resguide/itp.htm#ods

David Griffiths is Assistant Government Information Librarian and United Nations Specialist at the Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.