Learn to Read a UN Call Number
The United Nations Collection on Deck 5 East of the Main Stacks includes both catalogued and
uncatalogued materials in paper format.
All U.N. documents on Deck 5 East and in the U.N. reference collection (located in room 200 of
the Main Library) are arranged by symbol. An initial letter(s) in upper case followed immediately
by a slash (e.g., A/ or TD/) distinguishes a document's symbol from other numbers that may appear
on the piece.
The following rules will allow you to determine the proper shelving sequence of any item:
- Segments beginning with letters should be compared letter by letter and arranged
alphabetically. A document bearing the symbol A/CN.1/1 would be shelved before a document having
the symbol A/CONF.1/1, since "CN" precedes "CONF" when both abbreviations are placed in alphabetic
order.
- All numbers (including years) are treated as whole numbers and never as decimals. The symbol
A/50/PV.10 would be found immediately after A/50/PV.9 on the shelf, since the number 10 is greater
than 9.
- Segments beginning with numbers come before segments beginning with letters. A/50/2 is shelved
before A/50/PV.1 since 2 is a numeral and the corresponding segment of A/50/PV.1 begins with the
letter "P."
- The call number for a
cataloged U.N. document consists of the prefix "UN." followed by the document's symbol.
The call number for a piece having the symbol A/50/238 would appear as follows:
UN. A/50/ 238
- Cataloged documents in the U.N. Collection are interfiled with uncataloged documents. A
cataloged document with the call number UN.A/50/238 would be shelved between the documents bearing
the symbols A/50/237 and A/50/239.
