Introduction to the ODS

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Introduction to the ODS
Official Document System of the United
Nations Welcome to this short introduction to
the ODS, the Official Document System of the
United Nations. During this presentation we will
show you how to use this electronic database
accessible via the Internet to find UN documents.
Please note that this course is intended for
searchers with at least a basic knowledge of UN
documentation and document symbols.
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• What types of documentation are accessible via
  the ODS?
• Comprehensive, though not complete, coverage of
  all types of publicly-available UN documentation
  began in the early to mid-1990s. Categories of
  documents included are
• Resolutions going back to 1946 (Security
  Council, General Assembly, Economic and Social
  Council and Trusteeship Council)
• Selected Security Council and General Assembly
  documents going back to 1985
• Meeting Records
• Reports
• Letters
• Daily Journals and Bulletins
• Administrative Issuances
• Administrative Tribunal Judgments

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• What documents are currently NOT accessible via
  the ODS?
• Most documents created prior to the early to
  mid-1990s (prior to the mid-1980s for General
  Assembly and the Security Council)
• UN sales publications
• UN public information materials
• UN press releases and briefings
• UN Treaty Series
• Documents that are not publicly released

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On this screen, accessible at http//documents.un.
org, you may choose a search interface from the
six official languages. In this example we
select English.
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This screen prompts you to choose between the
Simple, Advanced and Global search screens.
To begin, we choose Simple Search.
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• Simple Search screen
• The first page you will see is the Simple
  Search page which searches the UN Documentation
  Database. On this screen you are able to search
  by
• Document symbol
• In the documents text (also known as full-text
  search)
• By the date
• You may also choose to sort your search results
  by date of publication, document symbol and
  relevance.

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• Simple Search example
• If you already have the document symbol, which is
  the unique code assigned to every public
  document, you may enter it in the document symbol
  field and press search.
• On the next slide, we know the Millennium
  Declarations symbol, A/RES/55/2, so we enter it
  in the document symbol field and press search.
  
• In this example, you should change the sort
  option to Document Symbol. Youll see why when
  we look at the results.

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• Using search results
• The document requested is the first result shown
  on the list of 106 documents shown on the
  following slide because we sorted our list by
  document symbol. ODS reads document symbols
  from left to right, so all document symbols
  beginning with the character string A/RES/55/2,
  which includes documents ending in 2, 20 or 200
  and more.
• If we would have sorted by publication date, we
  would have had to search throughout this list to
  find the document we need, because the document
  with the most recent date would have been listed
  first.

A/RES/55/2A/RES/55/24A/RES/55/285etc.
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Date Column
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Now, click on the underlined symbol to see a
screen with indexing information about this
document.
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• Choosing a format
• From the next screen, you may select the desired
  language and format. Documents are loaded onto
  the ODS in the following formats
• Microsoft Word or Word Perfect
• Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). In order
  to view PDF documents, you will need to have
  Acrobat Reader installed on your computer which
  is freely available for downloading via the Adobe
  Web site (www.adobe.com).
• In our example, well choose the English PDF
  version.
• NOTE Choosing the PDF version has an important
  advantage the document will appear exactly as
  printed, reflecting the original formatting and
  reproducing all graphics, maps and annexes.

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• Opening a document
• The document should then open in a new window as
  shown in the next screen. Once the document is
  open, you may
• Read the document on the computer screen
• Print it out
• Save it to your computer
• E-mail it by attaching it as a file in any
  e-mail program by using the menu options usually
  located in the upper left area of your screen.
• If you read the document online, use the page
  down button on your keyboard.
• To perform another search, close this document by
  clicking on the X in the upper right hand
  corner.

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After the document is closed, you will still see
the document record on the ODS screen. In order
to refine the search, use the back button of
your browser, usually located in the top left.
To start a new search, click on New Search.
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• Finding older resolutions
• The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
  Discrimination against Women is included in
  resolution 180 of the 34th session of the General
  Assembly, so the symbol is A/RES/34/180.
• On the next screen, we enter that symbol into the
  symbol field.

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This search didnt work. The search did not
retrieve any documents. We didnt find this
resolution because resolutions adopted prior to
the start of the ODS in the early to mid-1990s
are kept in a separate Resolutions database on
the ODS. Well access the Resolutions
database next, using the back button of your
browser to modify the search.
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After pressing the Back button, we now see our
original search screen with A/RES/34/180 in the
symbol field. The only database you may search
using the Simple Search screen is a database
called UN Documents as indicated by the note
about this at the top of the screen. In order to
access the Resolutions database, click on the
Advanced Search button in the upper right.
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• Overview of the Advanced Search screen
• On the next slide, you will notice that this
  Advanced Search screen is laid out slightly
  differently from the Simple Search screen.
  There are also more search options.
• Beginning with the box located on the left-hand
  side, you will see the different databases
  available. In this tutorial, we are only
  covering UN Documents and Resolutions, but
  you may want to experiment with other databases
  depending on your needs.
• Also, notice that sort options are located in the
  box on the Advanced screen. You may also
  increase the number of documents to display and
  limit the number of maximum results, but these
  options would only be useful for searches where a
  large number of documents is expected.

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• More Advanced Search explanation
• Looking at the search options that begin near the
  center of the page, you will see more truncation
  and date searching options. You will also see
  additional fields that allow you to search for
  words in the documents title, by session and by
  agenda item number. Well cover these additional
  search options later.

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• Advanced Search example
• On the next screen we continue our search for The
  Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
  Discrimination against Women contained in the
  180th resolution of the 34th session
  (A/RES/34/180) which you see in the symbol
  field.
• We then switch to the Resolutions database and
  then press search.

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This search only returns one result, which is
exactly the resolution we need. To view the
resolution, we would follow the steps shown
earlier.
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• Another Advanced Search example
• On the next screen, were looking for a
  Secretary-Generals report on Sudan in 2004.
• Since we know it is a 2004 report to the Security
  Council well put S/2004 in the symbol field
  because all Security Council documents begin with
  the letter S.
• We also leave the truncation on right since we
  dont know the string of characters located to
  the right of the S/2004 in the symbol field.
• Well put sudan and report in the title field
  and press Search. NOTE Capitalization does
  not affect your search results.

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Our search was successful. Currently, five 2004
reports by the Secretary-General on Sudan were
retrieved.
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• More Full-Text Search Options
• When you dont know a document symbol, its
  helpful to use the full-text search option
  available in both the Simple and Advanced
  Search screens.
• Use Find This Phrase to find documents with an
  exact string of words in the text. An example
  would be this search string
• To find documents that contain a group of words
  in the text, but not in any specified order,
  select Find All The Words. An example would
  be this search string

Stakeholder institutions
Annan Ghandi Mandela
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• More Full-Text Search Options
• Use the setting Find any of the words when
  youre looking a document that contains a word
  with many synonyms like oil. An example of
  synonyms you might include would be
• If are familiar with other online database
  searching and you understand Boolean logic, you
  could use the Boolean Operators option to
  combine concepts with and, or and and not.
  An example would be
• NOTE More information and examples are
  available by clicking on the Help button in
  ODS. There are also a few other options we do
  not explain here.

oil petroleum petrol gasoline
poverty and hunger and mortality
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• Full-Text Search example
• On the next screen, we will try a full-text
  search to see if the phrase International Year
  for the Eradication of Poverty is mentioned in
  any Commission for Social Development documents
  
• We type the name International Year for the
  Eradication of Poverty in the full-text search
  box.
• We leave the Type of Full-text Search as the
  default setting Find this Phrase.
• We put e/cn.5 in the symbol field since we are
  looking for the Commission on Social Development
  documents and leave the truncation option set as
  the default, and then press Search.

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This list shows 15 documents from that Commission
that mention the international year for which we
searched. If you want to get a smaller set of
results, you could limit your search by date on
the previous search screen.
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• Another Advanced Search example
• If you are looking for a General Assembly
  document and know the agenda item and the
  session, you may find documents on the topic
  associated with the agenda item.
• On the next slide, were looking for documents
  relating to Measures to eliminate international
  terrorism, which was agenda item 156 of the 58th
  session and weve placed those numbers in the
  appropriate fields.
• In this example, we leave the default sort option
  as Date of publication.

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At the time this search was completed, there were
56 documents related to this agenda item.
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• Important Search Tip
• Your search results may be more precise if you
  use all the information you know about a
  document. But, if you put in incorrect
  information, you will not find the document(s)
  you need. If you get zero documents in a search
  where you have included a lot of information, try
  removing search elements or truncating words in
  the full-text box by using the asterisk
  character
• You will also not find the document(s) you need
  if you have spelling errors in your search terms,
  so be careful when youre typing or double-check
  your spelling if you cant find a document you
  believe exists.
• ODS also requires that you use hyphens and
  accents in searches when they are used in a
  document.

protocol
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• Another Important Search Tip
• You may use the question mark as a search tool in
  both the title and full-text field if you arent
  sure of the spelling or if a root word may have
  multiple forms. For example, documents on the
  same subject may use women or woman and you may
  search for both forms by replacing the differing
  character, in this example e and a, by a question
  mark

Wom?n
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• Global Search Limitations
• Global Search is not covered in this online
  guide for the following reasons
• No ability to limit search by specific fields,
  i.e. title, date, etc. Searching by date will
  retrieve all occurrences of the date in the
  publication text.
• Dates are sorted by the date the documented was
  added to ODS, which means that retrospectively
  digitized documents (e.g. a document published in
  1972 but scanned and indexed in 2005) will be
  listed first.
• Displays 6 hits for 6 languages.
• ODS staff are not yet familiar with the Global
  search limitations in language searching.

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• Questions?
• Weve given many examples in this short
  introductory session, but keep in mind that ODS
  is a complex system with many other search
  options. Also, be aware that a wider variety of
  documentation is available than we were able to
  demonstrate for this course.
• If you have questions about ODS
• Remember to consult the Help pages by clicking
  on the help button located in the upper right
  hand corner of the search screen.
• Contact your local UN library, depository
  library or information centre.