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IDTF Midwinter Meeting, January 19, 2002

International Labour Organization


The ILO is surveying its web site users in order to improve the site's usefulness. To participate in the survey, go to
or just click on the link at the top of their home page at
. Hundreds of photos are available on the web site for your use in web pages, etc. They are copyright-free but appropriate credit must be given to the International Labour Office and the photographer. See
to browse various series or to search by keyword. Publications news:
Key Indicators of the Labour Market 2001-2002 is now available in print and on CD. Copies can be purchased by calling Routledge at 800-634-7064. The online version, KILMnet, will be available soon. For a limited time, GODORT librarians can access KILM at the following address:
Enter Name: JAN2001c Password: JAN2001c. This address is good until 28 February 2002. Note that at the time of this writing, I had trouble using KILM. It took several minutes to download and some tabs at the top seemed to be hidden. It wasn't immediately apparent how to generate a table once selections were made. If you have problems or comments, please e-mail me and I will compile them to send to our ILO representative. The ILO representative reports that it takes about 20-30 minutes to load KILM, and after that access is quick.
International Labour Review is now available online. The 2001 volume is free if your institution has a print subscriptionthe same offer applies when you subscribe for 2002. You can also purchase the online version separately for the years 1999 and 2000. To use the online version you must register with CatchWord and have Adobe Acrobat or RealPage. International Labour Documentation has been discontinued beginning 2002. With the publishing of the
2001 Yearbook of Labour Statistics, the publication entitled
Sources and Methods: Labour Statistics will no longer be packaged as a companion with the yearbook. Future updates to Sources and Methods will be issued in a different format on an occasional basis. A new catalog is in preparation. Send an e-mail message to
klee@ilo.org with a mailing address if you would like to receive the 2002 Catalog. Respectfully submitted by Catherine Shreve, liaison

International Monetary Fund


I would like to bring to your attention IMF's notification system,
by which you can be alerted free, via email, of new items posted on the IMF website. The following publications are currently listed. You may select some or all of them and choose the notification schedule: as issued, daily, weekly, or no delivery.
Boletín del FMI en español 2 per month
Bulletin du FMI en français 2 per month
Communiqués 10 per year
Emerging Market Financing quarterly
Finance & Development quarterly
Finances & Développement en français quarterly
Finanzas & Desarrollo en español quarterly Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Country Documents 2 per month
IMF Country Reports 15 per month
IMF Research Bulletin quarterly
IMF Staff Papers 3 per year
IMF Statements at Donor Meetings New 1 per month
IMF Survey 2 per month
IMF Working Papers 15 per month
IMF's Financial Resources and Liquidity Position 1 per month Issues Briefs 1 per month
Letters of Intent 5 per month Mission Concluding Statements of Article IV Missions 3 per month
News Briefs 12 per month
Policy Discussion Papers New 10 per year
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers 3 per month Press Releases 8 per month
Public Information Notices 10 per month
SDR Valuation daily
Special Data Dissemination Standard quarterly Speeches 3 per month Transcripts 5 per month Views and Commentaries 3 per month

You will need to fill out a brief form and establish a password. With the password, you can later change the titles and how frequently you wish to receive mailings. Respectfully submitted by Vida Margaitis, liaison

Newsbank/Readex


AccessUN: Available for demonstration at ALA. There will be some slight changes to Readex's AccessUN first search screen. Additional buttons are being added in order to link to: 1) UNWire and Global Security Newswire, both produced by the National Journal Group for the UN Foundation, and 2) a drop down button for other relevant websites. The company plans to market a subset of AccessUN to public libraries and schools. Respectfully submitted by Barbara Mann, liaison

Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development


The following information has been supplied by Suzanne Edam, from the OECD Washington office: In brief, we can report that almost half of the OECD General Standing Order (GSO) plan clients in the United States have now converted their orders to SourceOECD, our new online service. From a financial point of view, this has benefited librarians a great deal this year, as the value of books shipped to libraries in 2001 will come to over $10,000 but the price for the books segment of SourceOECD is only $9550.00. Taking the full SourceOECD/periodicals also works out to be considerably less than getting them through the blanket standing order plan if you get the full line of periodicals. A number of improvements were recently made to SourceOECD which should make it more user friendly (e.g. drop-down menus and a more logical progression of screens), and more improvements are on the way (e.g. URLs for individual book titles, statistical tables series being indexed and usage reports for subscribers). Downloads from the site have been increasing steadily. Our fulfillment problems of the past two years are at last passing and the situation is improving. Shipments of books are almost completely up to date. There is still a claims backlog, but that is steadily being dealt with by the new fulfillment contractor (for more recent items) and our Paris headquarters (for older items). We are hearing from GSO and SourceOECD clients that the monthly shipments are a big improvement. Due to the confusion related to fulfillment over the past two years, there is a fairly large number of overdue invoices at this time, and we appreciate librarian's help in clearing these items. I would be happy to try to answer any questions. Suzanne Edam

Organization of American States


The following information has been supplied by Rene Gutierrez, a librarian at the OAS: Since the closing of the bookstore, the Library was asked to perform some of the works, i.e. claims. It has been almost a year, and right now we have very few claims for missing issues. We are receiving more and more requests for publications. We are updating our catalog of publications, and it will be placed on the Internet.
OAS Official Records Series: We are revising prices for standing orders, especially for OAS Official Records Series (publications). Just for 2001, the cost of the publications (OAS Official Records Series) would be $400.00it used to be $200.00. I need to know how many institutions would be interested in purchasing OAS Official Records. The most difficult task would be to know what is being sent from the OAS. At this particular time, I am sending an e-mail to the Distribution Unit, because even though there is no record of subscriptions being paid, the Unit continued sending publications last year. I received a request from an institution that has been receiving OAS Official Records when it had already cancelled the subscription in 1996. In short, I need to update that LIST of distribution. We prepared an e-mailing list of University Libraries and sent out a couple of advertisements. The OAS homepage now shows my e-mail address for inquiries about OAS publications,
Rgutierrez@oas.org. I can also be reached at (202) 458-6233. I wish to know what the other librarians think I need to do. I compiled documentation from the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Court for 1995-2001 to be microfilmed, but I don't have enough resources now. Is there a way to obtain seed funding for this project??
La Educación last number is year 2000, and they plan to prepare 2001 in paper. The Inter-American Review of Bibliography's last issue is 1999, nos.1-2 There is immediate plan to continue. The contact for ordering Americas magazine is James Kiernan (
jkiernan@oas.org), editor of the magazine. Rene

UNESCO


UNESCO has recently incorporated e-publishing and multimedia with their traditional printed resources. e-Books have a purely digital content, with no printed counterpart. According to UNESCO, e-Books were conceived exclusively for access on the Internet, and will enlarge the possibility of disseminating content in a more advantageous cost/benefit ratio. Selected new titles will be made available online for a "modest flat fee basis." E-Books are accessible in PDF and are readable with Acrobat Reader and have navigating facilities. This digital content will eventually be also offered on other formats for standard palm or e-book readers. Copyright - Engine of Development: An Analysis of the Role of Copyright in Economic Development and Cultural Vitality, is the first digital publication proposed by UNESCO Publishing. It highlights the economic benefits that flow to developing countries from strong copyright protection and documents the cultural benefits that spring from the elimination of copyright piracy. A timescale allows access to a concise historical notice of copyright development, and consultation is also possible through some 30 key questions or key words. Over 50 Internet links e references enlarge the references and bibliography.
Another recent edition to UNESCO's website as of January 15, 2002 is Knowledge Resources, a gateway to information resources on education, science and social sciences, culture, and communication/ informatics. This new web-based service from the Bangkok office provides links to websites, articles and full text under the main categories "Virtual Library" quot;Portals", quot;Electronic articles"and quot;Webcasts."It also includes a photo library that offers a selection of UNESCO collection of photographs made available online free of charge to professionals engaged in UNESCO's fields of competence.
Respectfully submitted by Angela Bonnell, liaison

United Nations


Official Document System (ODS): In 2001, the UN's most important achievement in the field of information dissemination was its reengineering of the Official Document Service (previously known as the Optical Disc System). ODS provides online access to UN parliamentary documentation issued from 1993 to the present, and it will eventually become the primary, and perhaps the only, vehicle for distributing UN masthead documents. Prior to the summer of 2001, the deficiencies of ODS could repel even the most intrepid user, as it was often impossible to log on and the system tended to be slow. The inauguration of the new ODS eliminated both of these flaws. Two shortcomings remain. First, while every document in ODS is available in the UN's six official languages, the system's search pages and online documentation are in English and French only. This deficiency will be eliminated in the near future. ODS's other remaining shortcoming is its extremely limited accessibility. It is available only via subscription, and although the price is reasonable, it is enough to deter most of the database's potential users, particularly in developing countries. In a document issued in November 2000 (A/C.5/56/12), the General Assembly's Administrative and Budgetary Committee expressed the UN's long-term commitment to making ODS freely available to the public. However, the Committee concluded that the Secretariat should study the impact of free access to the system in 2002 and then present options to member states toward the end of the year. United Nations Publications In 2001, UN Publications began to distribute the publications of two important bodies the International Trade Centre/WTO and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR). Both are available via standing order (their category designations are III.T and III.W, respectively). The UN continues to issue outstanding titles on CD-ROM. The most significant new digital title in 2002 will be the
Yearbook of the United Nations. This product, which will contain the searchable text of multiple editions, will be released in the summer. At the IDTF Meeting in June 2001, numerous objections to the UN Treaty Database license agreement were raised. The Task Force requested that I prepare a letter detailing the points of contention. The GODORT Chair signed and sent the letter to the head of United Nations Publications in August but has received no response. Respectfully submitted by David Griffiths, UN Liaison