International intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) play a significant role in contemporary life, and in the course of their functioning they produce a very large number of publications and documents. In a study published in 1979, Documentation of the United Nations System, the author estimates that of the United Nations organizations alone, counting all language versions, the yearly output is approximately 180,000 pieces, with 7,500 items, or five percent of the total, being publications properly so called. Although we have no real statistics on the use of international documents there is general agreement among specialists in this field that the vast bulk of IGO documentation goes unread. Many reports and studies are intended, of course, for a limited audience such as a single meeting's participants, but also included in the mass of IGO materials are items of potential value to researchers in most disciplines, including law. In the present column I hope, without overlapping other sections of IJLI, to provide news about new international information systems and projects, new publications or documents of the United Nations and its specialized agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Labor Organization (ILO), Unesco, and the World Bank, and information about international bodies outside the UN system. Fortunately, I am in a good position to see new IGO publications because they arrive daily at the Library of Congress from agencies scattered across the continents; I also obtain news from regular contacts in various organizations, particularly from individuals in Washington-based international agencies. Although my plan is to discuss specific organizations and documents, I shall also dwell a bit on the abstract subject of international documentation.
