The Law Library (hereinafter “the Library”) began collecting League of Nations publications in 1919 and has one of the most comprehensive collections of law and human rights-related UN materials. With the founding of the United Nations in 1945, the Library began collecting all Official Record Series of the United Nations 9(KZ4936 .A21982—KZ5070.2) and the United Nations Treaty Series (KZ172 .T74), also available electronically in HeinOnline's U.N. Documents collection, and other UN publications of legal relevance. Today, the Library has over 4,000 individually cataloged records by or about the United Nations.
The collection is shelved in two areas of the library. Most books about the United Nations are found in the call number range KZ3000-KZ6000. UN material related to human rights can be found in the K3200 and KJ600 ranges. Serial documents, such as the Official Records of the General Assembly and Proceedings from the Human Rights Council are kept in closed stacks and are available upon request.
This number and the collection do not include materials by or about autonomous related inter-governmental organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, or the International Labor Organization. These organizations all produce their own documents independently and use a different document classification system than is used by the United Nations bodies as does the International Court of Justice. As more U.N.-related documentation has become freely available on the web, the library has stopped collecting U.N. materials in print.
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The United Nations (UN) System is comprised of six main bodies and numerous commissions, committees, working groups, and associated organizations.
Generally, UN research will concern the actions and documents of the General Assembly, Security Council, and Economic and Social Council and their subsidiary bodies.
The General Assembly, the International Law Commission, and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) are the principal UN bodies creating international law.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the principal judicial organ of the UN, settling legal disputes submitted to it by States in accordance with international law and giving advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized UN organs and specialized agencies.
Bodies Outside the Scope of this Guide
The Specialized Agencies (e.g. ILO, FAO, WHO, IMF, WIPO), and Related Organizations (e.g. WTO) are all administered separately from the main UN bodies and have their own budgets, secretariats, and subsidiary bodies. Each specialized agency and related organization has its own membership; a country is not automatically a member even it it is a member of the UN.
Additionally, there are a a number of UN offices, programs, and funds, including the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), that have their own organizational structures and administration.
united nations