Official Documents of the UN Now Free

Preesh to Web4Lib to the pointer that the Official Documents of the United Nations are now available for free. The documents are available at http://documents.un.org/welcome.asp?language=E . ...

Here's how the front page describes it: "ODS covers all types of official United Nations documentation, beginning in 1993. Older UN documents are, however, added to the system on a daily basis. ODS also provides access to the resolutions of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council from 1946 onwards."

But not everything is here: "The system does not contain press releases, UN sales publications, the United Nations Treaty Series or information brochures issued by the Department of Public Information."

The site has a simple and an advanced keyword search. The simple search allows you to choose in what language you wish to search, document symbol, keyword, and date. The advanced search allows you to specify a database and also includes searches for job number, title words, subject, session, agenda item number, etc.

A simple keyword search for Zambia took a long wait and then produced the maximum of 1000 results. (Searches that generate over 1000 results are limited to the first 1000.) Result listings include publication date, document symbol, and title. Clicking on the document symbol will take you to a page where you can download the PDF or a Word file (in one of several languages) and get additional information on the document, including subjects and agenda items.

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