United Nations Publications are of interest to anyone researching international affairs including: peacekeeping, human rights and environmental co-operation.
What does the Library hold?
There are three types of United Nations publications held by the National Library:
- Official records of the major organs, primarily the General Assembly and Security Council but also some conferences
- Sales publications including the major information titles of the UN, its subidiary organs and committees
- Mimeographed documents, provisional uncorrected records of the major organs which were produced prior to official print records becoming available
Some categories of material not received by depository libraries are those designated limited or restricted to special interest groups. For indexes to many of these documents, see the Indexes to Publications page.
Official records
General Assembly | 1946-2005, 2010-2011 |
Security Council | 1946-1985 |
Economic and Social Council | 1979-1990 |
UN Conference on Trade and Development | 1956-1992 |
The library also holds publications of reprinted United Nations resolutions, including indexes, voting records and related material:
Series 1, Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly | 1973-1988 |
Series 2, Resolutions and decisions adopted by the Security Council | 1946-1979 |
Sales publications
Serial print publications held by the library include:
Yearbook of the United Nations | 1946-2011 |
United Nations Chronicle | 1976-2012 |
Statistical Yearbook | 1948-1989 |
Demographic Yearbook | 1948-2006 |
The library also holds a number of single works, such as:
- Human rights: a compilation of international instruments / Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
- Everyone’s United Nations / UN Department of Public Information
Mimeographed Documents
These individual documents are not recorded in the catalogue, but are held in off-site storage. They are filed as single documents (not bound), stapled together. The library stopped receiving these documents in 2005, after official documents were made available online.
They can be requested via the catalogue at United Nations Documents. When requesting these documents, you will need to provide the title, date and UN Document Symbol for each document. The UN Document Symbol can be found by using the Indexes to Publications.