At the Reference Desk

Almost all international stories nowadays seem to involve the United Nations at one level or another. Yet the United Nations website includes such a vast amount of information that trying to get a sense of its size, contents, and activities, is like trying to sip water from an open fire hydrant.

A sampling of a dozen examples, pointing to the huge range of areas covered – all related to their large and ambitious mandates of promoting world peace and security, development, human rights, humanitarian affairs and international law – should illustrate this point:

1. UN Databases
2. Resolution 2040 and an announcement that the Security Council Extends Support Mission in Libya for additional 12 Months
3. The International Court of Justice
4. Treaties . . .  Agreement between the United States of America and Canada on Great Lakes Water Quality, 1978
5. Current Peacekeeping Operations
6. Statements and Speeches of Ban Ki-moon
7. Oceans and Law of the Sea
8. Report of the Security Council Mission to Afghanistan
9. The Kyoto Protocol – UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
10. A current story on Syria from the UN News Centre
11. International Merchandise Trade Statistics
12. The Status of Food Security in Africa by the Economic Commision for Africa

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The UN website can be challenging to navigate due to its large size, complexity of resouces, and multiple access points. If you are feeling daunted, you may want to come down to the library to get help consulting print and other resources.

These resources will give you an added perspective and understanding of the United Nations: following are five suggestions for getting started:

1. Of the many reference works on the United Nations, three stand out for special mention:
   

   Encyclopedia of the United Nations, 2nd ed.	United Nations Handbook, 2011	Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements, 3rd. ed.

2. For excellent topic overviews, mostly full text essays in encyclopedic sources, try searching the Gale Virtual Reference Library – this will require your library card for sign in.
3. Click Here for a search of over a thousand works by or about the UN at the Toronto Reference Library  – Note how the topic subdivides by subject at the bottom left hand column of the screen, eg. United Nations – Armed Forces
4. Click Here for books authord by the UN or co-authored by them within TPL
5. For articles . . . there will be a good selection to be found in the Social Sciences category of Article Search on our website – Note, this will also require your library card for sign in.

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