Q: I found two books in the online catalog using the subject term "Humanitarian Assistance-Somalia," but I can't find anything in AccessUN. I'm sure the UN must have some documents on the topic, how can I find citations?

A: Illinet Online uses Library of Congress Subject Headings while AccessUN uses their own controlled vocabulary. Did you enter "Humanitarian Assistance-Somalia" in the input box and search by Subject? If you did, then AccessUN looked for those terms as an exact phrase, and AccessUN does not use this phrase as one of its Subjects.

To find information on this topic try searching for "humanitarian aid and Somalia" in the Subject field, and you'll find 186 search results. You may want to narrow down your search by using the Boolean operator "and" to add another search term like "Budget Contributions," "Disaster Relief," or "Cooperation Between Organizations." To learn more, see the AccessUN help screen on Boolean operators.Unfortunately AccessUN doesn't allow you to browse through a listing of their subject headings, so you may have to be creative and use truncation.

Q:I'm a little confused. It seems that UN documents use both British and U.S. spellings. How do I know which spelling to use when I search AccessUN?

A: You can't know which spelling to use. Your safest bet is to search for both variations of the word. When searching for a word such as programme or program, you can use truncation or wildcarding. In AccessUN you can search "program$" to find all words starting with those letters, and up to 5 letters following the "m." So your search will include such words as program, programme, programs, programming, etc. To learn more, see the AccessUN help screen on word variation.

Q:What does it mean when I see a UN symbol with a bracket [ ] around it. For example, [E]/ECE/…?

A: Sometimes the UN body issuing the publication does not insert its symbol (e.g., "E" for the Economic and Social Council). When this happens, Newsbank/Readex inserts the correct symbol and puts it in brackets. It will also appear this way on the microfiche.

Q:This database is not giving me the results what I want. Are there any other UN Sources you can suggest?

A: Sure. A good starting point would be UIUC's Government Documents library website in the United Nations/International section. It will refer you to many other print and electronic sources to choose from, including the United Nations Homepage

Q:I have a publication that looks interesting, but where do I find it at UIUC? Are the publications in the Main Stacks or in Government Documents?

A: Unfortunately, there is no quick answer to how to find the documents in our library. It depends what type of document you found (e.g., a sales document or a masthead document) and the date. Finding documents at UIUC will provide you with the details you need to get started.