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The United Nations on the Web: Bogeyman No More

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2019

Nicholas Pengelley
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Abstract

The client with a United Nations-related question, once the bogeyman of law librarians, can now be approached with confidence, in the knowledge that many questions can be readily answered by recourse to the Internet – through websites that are either free, or relatively inexpensive to access, or through commercial hosts such as Lexis and Westlaw. This contention is supported with particular reference to treaty research.

It must be emphasized that the functions and structure change continuously and, of course, the documentation changes as well.

United Nations Documentation: a Brief Guide

The UN is a major publisher. Over the more than five decades of its existence, it has published hundreds of thousands of documents (reports, studies, resolutions, meeting records, letters from Governments, etc.) on topics of key interest (disarmament, the environment, human rights, international law, peace-keeping, etc.).

Under the circumstances, it might initially seem impossible to track down precise information in view of the overwhelming amount of data available, but a systematic approach to your research will always yield results.

United Nations Documentation Research Guide

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Legal Information , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , Summer 2002 , pp. 308 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 by the International Association of Law Libraries 

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References

1 United Nations Documentation: A Brief Guide, New York: UN, 1994.Google Scholar

2 United Nations Documentation Research Guide, prepared by the Dag Hammarskjöld Library (www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/basic.htm).Google Scholar

3 See, e.g., the works cited in the Research Guide. Google Scholar

4 http://www.google.com.Google Scholar

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9 The range of guides to international law research produced by Marylin Raisch, (International and Foreign Law Librarian, Bora Laskin Law Library, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto) being outstanding examples. (http://www.lawlib.utoronto.ca/***intmat.htm).Google Scholar

10 Shahla Aly is Vice-President, Communications Sector, IBM Canada. Ms Aly was speaking at the opening of the conference, “Not a Box but a Window: Law Libraries and Legal Education in a Virtual World,” hosted by the Bora Laskin Law Library, University of Toronto. (See http://www.law-lib.utoronto.ca/conferences/future/index.htm).Google Scholar

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43 Lyonette Louis-Jacques (Foreign and International Law Librarian and Lecturer in Law D'Angelo Law Library, University of Chicago Law School) recently promoted the web-site in her presentation on the “Best of the Web for International Law” to the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Librarians (London, Ontario, 28 May 2001).Google Scholar

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47 See those listed in the guide prepared by Marci Hoffman and Paul Zarins at the ASIL web-site: http://www.asil.org/resource/un1.htm#Section3 and those prepared by Marylin Raisch, above n9.Google Scholar

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49 To subscribe to the list, send the following message to , “SUBSCRIBE INT-LAW Your-first-name Your-last-name.”Google Scholar