UNESCO: United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNESCO was established in 1945, has its headquarters in Paris, France, and has dozens of field offices throughout the world. It has more than 180 member nations sharing in its programs of promoting peace and security throughout the world through educational, scientific and cultural cooperation and communication. The United States was one of the founding nations but is no longer a member. There are frequent references to UNESCO's "fields of competence" which it describes as consisting of education, science, culture, social and human sciences, communication, and information sciences.
UNESCO sponsors a huge number of programs, publications, networks and databases; vast amounts of information are available at its website and those of affiliated agencies. A few tools to assist beginning navigation are the summaries of major programs and fields of activity and the AtoZ topical site map that also includes a search capability. Described here are a few of the major information services, educational units, and significant databases.
UNESCO's Education Sector
UNESCO'S Education
Sector offers resources organized around three major current
initiatives, 20 themes ranging from technical education to street
children, and ten collaborative networks composed of institutions
from member states. Also available is an email
newsletter alerting service and a list of links to related UN
agencies,
field offices, and various sponsored institutes
including:
International Bureau of
Education (IBE)
International Institute for
Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA)
International Institute for
Educational Planning (IIEP)
International Institute
for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean
(IESALC)
UNESCO Institute for Information
Technologies in Education (IITE)
UNESCO Institute for
Education (UIE)
UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
UNESCO Statistics
UNESCO
Institute for Statistics is headquartered in Montreal Quebec.
It gathers data and issues reports on cultural and communication
matters, such as the number of television receivers in the world
and the number of general interest newspapers. A current project is
to develop science and technology indicators that can help identify
the national policy needs in various parts of the world. UIS'
website offers much information about the agency: its mission,
responsibilities, and current projects
A wide variety of
Education Statistics are available as are reports and
statistics about world
literacy and achieving the objectives of the
Education for All initiative.
UNESCO Publications and Information Services
UNESCO Publishing presents information on publications available for sale including books (printed or digital), multimedia (dvd, cd-roms, VHS videos), periodicals, scientific maps and audiovisual material for professionals. A searchable catalogue of publications is offered and some recent titles are available online full-text for free for a limited period of time. An email alerting service is also available.
The UNESCO Library in France provides reference assistance to anyone interested in UNESCO activities and fields of competence. Maintains collections of UNESCO publications and periodicals and newspapers related to the subject areas of interest. It offers online search capabilities for UNESDOC (full-text of UNESCO documents), UNESBIB (bibliographic citations from 1972 forward) and access to a browsable version of the UNESCO Thesaurus.
UNESCO Information
Services makes available a wide variety of resources
including 123 bibliographic, referral and full text databases
produced by UNESCO. Some databases available online are:
UNESDOC-- the full texts of
official UNESCO documents (about 20,000). Contents include speeches
of Directors General since 1987, Executive Board documents since
1992, the General Conference since 1991, and Resolutions and
Decisions since 1946.
Photobank (10,000
images)--the collection was started in 1946 when UNESCO was founded
and currently contains over 10,000 digitalized images. The intent
is to continue adding images as the rest of the collection is
digitalized and further developed so as to ensure a more equitable
balance of subjects and countries. This collection is searchable,
and it is possible to apply for reproduction rights from UNESCO
Publishing;
Index Translationum: the
worldwide translations database (1,3 million bibliographic
records)--This freely accessible database contains cumulative
bibliographic citations for books translated and published in
approximately 100 member nations since 1979. For instance it is
possible to search for translations into French of the
German-language works by Sigmund Freud; this search retrieved 79
citations. The database includes more than one million citations to
titles in all subject areas and is to be updated quarterly.
International Social
Sciences Directory: Institutions, periodicals and specialists
(DARE)--More than 12,000 listings for social science research
and training institutions and specialists. Also includes listings
for resources in the fields of peace, human rights, and
international law. For instance, Chicago listings include UofC's
Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture; the Chicago
Council on Foreign Relations; and the Peace Institute of Loyola
University.
UNESCO
Archives Portal-- An international information gateway for
archivists and archive users. Has more than 6,000 links, some with
very brief annotations. Provides a directory of archives around the
world, lists of conferences, professional development
opportunities, and online finding aids.
UNESCO Libraries
Portal: "an international information gateway for librarians
and library users"-- Includes more than 10,000 links to libraries,
librarianship resources, and professional topics such as copyright
and censorship.
