International Organization Information / Research: 1986

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Prepared for Union of International Associations (General Assembly, 27th November 1986)
See also searchable XPDF version (original titles, sub-headings, order and typography); also reports 1959-2006

Organization profiles / networks

Yearbook of International Organizations: An overview of this series is given in Annex A, and composed of the following 3 volumes.

Organization descriptions and index (Volume 1): This volume was successfully completed on schedule for publication in July 1986. This was the first time that the publication was produced through the new computer system. No use was made of the external serv1ce bureau on which the UIA has been dependent for the past 14 years.

A number of innovations or improvements were made, partly to facilitate the integration at the computer level whic:h the computer system makes possible:

(a) The number of organization (and treaties) has been increased from 24180 for 1985 to 25124, although less effort was put into searching out new categories of organizations than in previous years/because of the emphasis on ensuring a smooth transition to the new computer system. The number of organizations from Sections A through D in fact decreased slightly from 5054 to 5018 because of some reallocations to Sections E through H which had been postponed from,the previous year. There would appear to be a tendency for the number of "classical" organizations to stabilize (taking into account creations and cessations of activity), with the major increases observable in the Sections E, F and G.

(b) Entry quality: The quality of the entries on the existing organizations continues to be improved to the point where a significant number of organizations now take the trouble to congratulate the editors ..

(c) Entry number presentation: This has now been modified under a long-debatec;l compromise formula which maintains continuity whilst ensuring the appropriate degree .of integration between the organization and caleIJ.dar.files at the computer level (previously a source of continuing frustration). Entry numbers now have the section letter (which may change if the organization is reallocated to a new section) in front of the old number (now permanent for bodies in Sections A through F), giving numbers of the form BCl828.

(d) Keywords in text: Work continues on identifying keywords in the text of entries which are extracted into the index and which are also used to identify organizations grouped by subject in Volume 3.

(e) Events paragraph: As part of the process of increasing the integration with the Calendar, an Events paragraph has been introduced ..

(f) Section modifications: The continuing proble:m of the limitation on the number of pages to 1600, supposedly because of difficulty in binding connected with the 1 printing method used, has meant that the following sections are not printed in Volume l, although they are indexed: G: Internationally-oriented national organizations H: Inactive organizations J: Unconfirmed new organizations s: Conference series R: Religious orders T: Multilateral treaties U: Unconfirmed organizations from the past The name and address of bodies in Sections G and R are however available from Volume 2, and from Volume 3. In the continuing difficulty over the number of pages the publisher has experimented for this edition with a much thinner paper. This makes the volume appear thinner.

(g) Index: Minor changes have been made to the index to make it easier to use.

(h) Introduction and appendices: For the first time it has been possible to produce these in-house, partly by sending disks to a Brussels printer for final film production, partly using the UIA laser printer (especially for statistical tables). This has proved much more convenient for all concerned, permitting much greater control over the final output. The opportunity was taken to transfer much of the material previously appearing in the.Introduction to Appendices to simplify access to the volume (see Annex l).

(i) Quality of proofs: For the first time organizations received the proof of their entry generated from the UIA laser-printer using a proportionally spaced typographical font. This is much superior to the readability of the proof generated by the service bureau.

(j) Editorial warning: Following requests made at.previous meetings of the UIA Executive Council, a prominently displayed explicit warning to users has been included indicating the degree of responsibility taken by the UIA for tquality of the information included (see Annex 2)

Policy issues:

1. Price of volume in relation to accessibility (see discussion of mini-directories.

2. Problems of coverage in relation to page restrictions (the possibilty of a second volume has been rejected for marketing reasons).

3. Access of users to the data base (whether online, on magnetic tape, or on laser disk)

International Organization Participation (Volume 2): This publication was completed on schedule for publication in August 1986. It was produced for the first time on the in-house computer using a specially commissioned set of programmes.

The main modification made was the change in the entry numbering system necessary to cross-reference Volume 1. As with Volume 1 the Introduction and Appendices were reworked and repositioned. The considerably delays previously experienced in preparing and composing the statistical tables were avoided by generating them in-house and setting them on the laser printer.

Global Action Networks (Volume 3): Editorial work was completed in October, slightly behind the schedule necessary to ensure publication before the end of 1986. It is hoped that this will still be possible.

Reasons for the delay were in large part due to the fact that a completely new approach was taken to the editorial work on this publication which takes maximum advantage of the in-house system. An extensive suite of programs had to be debugged under production conditions in addition to discovering the best way to make use of these tools under editorial conditions.

The main visible differences to this publication are as follows:

(a) Contents (see Annex 3): The volume has been increased in size from 1056 to nearly 1500 pages. This is due to the inclusion of organizations which have, in the past, either been excluded entirely or only included in the principal section. In addition entries from the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential have been included (see below) Q --

(b) Classification of material from the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential: Due to space and time limitations it proved i:npossible to cross-reference the international organizations from within the Encyclopedia. It was therefore decided to classify the world problems and strateg_ies by subject in Volume 3 with the international organizations (and treaties) from Volume l.

A first step in this direction had in fact been taken for the previous edition of Volume 3 using the pre-publication list of world problems, largely based.on the 1976 editionv Inclusion of this material did not apply any signi:f icant changes to the standard subject categories already in useo Following the established experimental approach to the category scheme of Volume 3 1 coding experim.ents have however been deliberately undertaken with the gerund term (e.g. enhancing, promoting) establishing the dynamic dimension of the strategy (in contrast to the 3 static subject dimensions also present in the name and handled in the normal way). A similar editorial experiment has been undertaken with the values identified in the values section of the Encyclopedia.

(c) Organization types: Following requests made at previous meetings of the Executive Council, a first experiment has been undertaken in grouping organizations by type in a new Section z .. Unfortunately, because of shortage of time and the complications of the transition to the new system this is a very rudimentary effort limited to some exceptional categories:

Several additional categories involving larger numbers of organizations were originally included, but these had to be excluded at the last minute to bring the size of the volume within the required page limits. Hopefully a more systematic approach can be taken for the next edition.

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