Bibliography research

The Union of International Associations has been associated with bibliographical initiatives since its creation in 1910. One of its founders, Paul Otlet, was at that time Secretary-General of the International Institute of Bibliography (founded in 1895), through which the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), was first developed. The institute later became the International Federation for Documentation (FID), and, in 1986, the International Federation for Information and Documentation.

The bibliographical work of the UIA has taken several distinct approaches, including: publications produced by international organizations and by organization executives; conference proceedings; studies of international organizations; and bibliography relating to the themes of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential. The entry portal to the UIA's bibliography database is available here.

Publications produced by international organizations

The profiles of international organizations which appear in Volume 1 of the Yearbook of International Organizations have included bibliographical information on the periodical and other publications produced by such organizations, since the early form of the Yearbook published in 1910. For example a Catalogue des publications d'associations internationales was published by the UIA in La Vie Internationale (1921, novembre, 1, pp 197-202, fascicule 26). Between 1983 and 1995, such information was also presented in Volume 1 of the Yearbook as a special title index (in an Appendix) to the publication information in organization profiles.

Information on the publications of international organizations first appeared in a separate volume produced by the UIA in 1953 under the title Directory of Periodicals Published by International Non-Governmental Organizations. This contained a total of 699 entries. A revised edition was published in 1959, containing 1,340 entries; another revision was published in 1969 containing 1,734 entries. Space constraints also increased the justification for a separate volume of the Yearbook of International Organizations dedicated to organizations' bibliography, into which this information could be transferred in a new format with indexing. First published in 1995, it is titled Volume 4: International Organizations Bibliography and Resources and an index is available here.The UIA was represented in a number of discussions relating to the challenges of bibliographical control of intergovernmental, and especially United Nations, documentation; and produced commissioned reports for two such events. The first part of Volume 4 of the Yearbook contains this bibliographical information. It contains 16,695 entries.

Volume 6 of the Yearbook: Who's Who in International Organizations, first published in 2007, details the descriptive personal profiles of executives of international organizations. This volume also contains personal bibliographies of organization executives and information on works that they have authored or edited.