UN Digital Library: Research Search Guide

The UN Digital Library (UNDL) is the open-access institutional repository and bibliographic discovery platform of the United Nations. Developed jointly by the Dag Hammarskjöld Library at UN Headquarters in New York and the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG) Library, the platform provides global access to UN parliamentary documentation, voting data, speeches, maps, and open-access flagship publications. Built upon CERN’s open-source Invenio repository framework, UNDL modernizes the preservation of the United Nations’ institutional memory, succeeding the legacy UNBISnet system.

What it is used for in research

Researchers in political science, international law, diplomatic history, and global public policy rely on the UN Digital Library to trace multilateral decision-making from initial proposal to final adoption. While general academic databases index commercial journals, UNDL indexes the primary documentation of international diplomacy. The platform integrates descriptive and administrative metadata across the Organization’s principal organs, enabling scholars to reconstruct legislative histories, analyze foreign policy alignments, and verify official statements.

Key research functions supported by the system include:

Legislative and Diplomatic Tracing: Connecting draft resolutions (documents bearing the /L. series symbol) to preliminary committee debates, verbatim meeting records, amendments, and final adopted resolutions.
Voting Pattern Analysis: Examining roll-call voting records for General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, tracking affirmative votes, negative votes, abstentions, and non-voting member states across sessions.
Official Statements and Speeches: Searching diplomatic statements made by delegates during plenary sessions and committee debates, indexed by speaker, country, meeting record, and agenda item.
Archival Retrieval: Accessing millions of digitized UN records structured according to international archival standards and Dublin Core / MARC metadata schemas, complementing external collections such as the National Security Archive.
Multilingual Documentation: Retrieving authoritative texts across the six official languages of the United Nations: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

Install or access (official source only)

The UN Digital Library is a web-based repository accessible through standard modern web browsers without installing local software or client applications. Researchers access the platform directly at the official portal:

https://digitallibrary.un.org/

Public access is open and unrestricted: researchers can search metadata, review linked records, and download digitized PDF documents without logging in or paying licensing fees. However, the Dag Hammarskjöld Library offers an optional free account registration for researchers wishing to utilize personalized workspace features:

Saved Searches: Storing frequently used queries and complex search syntax strings across sessions.
Automated Email Alerts: Setting up notifications to receive updates when new UN documents matching specific criteria or agenda items are published.
Collaboration Baskets: Grouping relevant records into research baskets, organizing citations, moving records between collections, and sharing curated baskets with working groups or public collaborators.

Institutional repositories and university libraries can also embed UNDL search boxes directly into research guides using standard HTTP GET parameters targeting https://digitallibrary.un.org/search with parameter p for query terms and parameter c to restrict queries to specific collections (such as Documents and Publications, Voting Data, or Speeches).

The following task walks through searching, filtering, and retrieving the legislative history and voting records for a specific United Nations resolution.

Open the Search Interface: Navigate to digitallibrary.un.org. The homepage displays the Simple Search input box by default. To access advanced field builders, click Advanced Search next to the search button.
Enter Search Terms and Field Codes: In the search box, enter your topic terms, document symbol, or country query. For precise matching, apply verified command prefixes:
- To search by official document symbol: enter documentsymbol:A/RES/78/* (or an exact symbol such as A/RES/79/10).
- To search member state actions: enter author:"United Kingdom" AND (climate OR environment).
- To enforce an exact phrase: enclose words in quotation marks, such as "sustainable development".
- To truncate stems or accommodate spelling variations: use an asterisk, such as disarm* or defen*e.
Activate Full-Text Searching: By default, Simple Search queries bibliographic metadata fields (titles, authors, agenda items, subjects). To search within the actual body text of scanned and digitized documents, select the Fulltext Search radio button to turn it ON, or use the inline command prefix fulltext:"peacekeeping operations".
Apply Date Range Truncation: When restricting results across specific years, apply asterisk truncation to date strings in the query: enter year:2010*->2024*. Omitting asterisks can cause the index to skip records indexed with full calendar dates.
Refine via Sidebar Facets: After clicking Search, narrow the result set using the left-hand navigation facets:
- Under Resource Type, filter by Documents and Publications, Voting Data, Speeches, or Maps.
- Under UN Bodies, narrow by organ (e.g., General Assembly, Security Council, or Economic and Social Council).
- Under Date, select specific calendar years to isolate sessional outputs.
Export Citations: Open the selected record to inspect its bibliographic detail. Use the export utility to export formatted references into bibliographic managers like Zotero or Citavi, or download the official PDF in the preferred UN language.

Output and how to read it

Each bibliographic record in the UN Digital Library is structured to display descriptive metadata, linked parliamentary lineage, and administrative indexing:

UN Document Symbol: The official call number assigned by the UN Secretariat, formatted according to strict organizational hierarchies:
- A/: General Assembly records.
- S/: Security Council records.
- E/: Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) records.
- ST/: Secretariat publications and administrative instructions.
- Suffixes indicating document character: /RES/ for adopted resolutions, /PV. for provisional verbatim meeting records, /SR. for summary records of committee meetings, and /L. for limited-distribution draft resolutions.
Linked Data Relationships: The Invenio platform automatically maps reciprocal relationships between documents. A resolution entry provides direct reciprocal hyperlinks to the meeting record where the debate occurred, the draft resolution that initiated it, and the corresponding voting record.
Voting Data Breakdown: When viewing a voting record, the page displays:
- The resolution number and title.
- The adoption date and plenary meeting symbol.
- The aggregate vote tally: number of member states voting in favor, voting against, and abstaining.
- The comprehensive roll-call listing: an alphabetical roster of all UN member states categorized under their recorded vote position (In favour, Against, Abstaining, or Absent/Non-voting).
Speech Indexing: Speech records detail the individual diplomatic representative, the member state or intergovernmental organization represented, the meeting symbol, the date of delivery, and the specific agenda item number under discussion, categorized via standard controlled vocabularies derived from the UNBIS Thesaurus.

Troubleshooting

When searching the UN Digital Library, researchers commonly encounter several metadata and indexing challenges:

Date Range Queries Return Incomplete Results:

Cause: Entering date ranges without wildcards (e.g., year:1997->2003) often bypasses records where the publication date is recorded as a full ISO date rather than a solitary four-digit year.

Fix: Always append an asterisk to both bounds in the query string: year:1997*->2003*.
Bibliographic Record Exists Without a Downloadable PDF:

Cause: The UN Digital Library contains comprehensive retrospective bibliographic records dating back to 1979 (and earlier for major resolutions), but retrospective document digitization remains an ongoing process.

Fix: Check the Official Document System (ODS) for digital files, or request on-demand digitization through the Dag Hammarskjöld Library’s Ask DAG reference service.
Simple Search Overwhelmed with Secondary Commentary:

Cause: Standard keyword searches execute broad matching across all description fields.

Fix: Narrow the query using explicit field syntax: use documentsymbol: for exact symbol matching, or select the specific organ facet (e.g., Security Council) from the left sidebar.
Multi-Term Query Fails to Find Consecutive Phrases:

Cause: UNDL applies an implicit Boolean AND across unquoted terms, retrieving records where words appear in different sections.

Fix: Enclose the phrase in double quotation marks (e.g., "universal declaration of human rights") to enforce contiguous word order.

Free alternatives (table)

Scholars and international policy researchers have access to several specialized repositories for United Nations and multilateral documentation. The table below compares the primary free platforms maintained by the United Nations and institutional partners:

Platform	Primary Content Focus	Key Strengths	Limitations Compared to UNDL
UN Digital Library (UNDL)	UN documents, voting records, speeches, maps, and open publications	Linked data between resolutions, meeting debates, and votes; bibliographic records from 1979; user baskets and alerts	Primary platform; retrospective digitization of pre-1979 print documents is still expanding
Official Document System (ODS)	Full-text UN parliamentary documentation from 1993 to present	Exhaustive full-text PDF repository of official records and historical resolutions back to 1946	No linked voting tallies, no speech transcripts indexing, and lacks user research basket utilities
UN iLibrary	UN sales publications, books, policy reports, and statistical yearbooks	Comprehensive coverage of published research monographs, analytical series, and global data publications	Focuses on published analytical monographs rather than parliamentary legislative drafts or roll-call votes
UN Treaty Collection (UNTC)	Multilateral treaties deposited with the UN Secretary-General	Authoritative treaty texts, certified status lists, ratifications, accessions, and declarations	Specialized exclusively in treaty law; does not index general committee debates or resolutions
UN Member States on the Record	Member state diplomatic participation index	Quick access to statements, letters, and draft resolutions sponsored by individual countries	Narrower focus on national delegation records rather than general thematic literature

FAQ

What is the difference between the UN Digital Library and the Official Document System (ODS)?

The Official Document System (ODS) is primarily a full-text storage repository for United Nations documents issued since 1993 (with resolutions back to 1946). The UN Digital Library is an integrated discovery catalog that indexes both digital files and print bibliographic records, providing linked data connections between resolutions, draft documents, verbatim meeting records, voting records, and speech citations.

How far back does voting data go in the UN Digital Library?

The UN Digital Library provides voting data for resolutions adopted by the General Assembly from Resolution 1 (11 December 1946) to the present, and for resolutions adopted by the Security Council from Resolution 1 (24 January 1946) to the present.

Can researchers search across all six official UN languages?

Yes. While metadata indexing is standard in English, the full-text search capability scans documents across all six official languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.

How do I search for a specific country’s statements and sponsored resolutions?

To identify communications, statements, and sponsored resolutions from a specific country, construct a search query using the author: field prefix combined with Boolean terms: for example, author:"United Kingdom" AND (climate OR environment) or author:Thailand AND (wom*n OR gender).

Do I need an account to download UN documents from the platform?

No. Public access to search, view metadata, and download digitized PDF documents is completely open and free of charge. User account registration is strictly optional and is used for saving search queries, setting up email alerts, and creating collaboration baskets.

Sources (official docs)

United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library, The United Nations Digital Library is here! (read 2026-11-09): https://www.un.org/en/library/united-nations-digital-library-here
United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library, How to Use the UN Digital Library Research Guide (read 2026-11-09): https://research.un.org/en/digitallibrary/about
United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library, Ask DAG! Knowledge Base and Research FAQs (read 2026-11-09): https://ask.un.org/faq/418224 and https://ask.un.org/faq/416223
United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library, UN Document Symbols Research Guide (read 2026-11-09): https://research.un.org/en/docs/symbols
United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library, How to Find UN Voting Records Research Guide (read 2026-11-09): https://research.un.org/en/docs/voting