Yearbook of International Organizations Online

Navigation Guide The Yearbook of International Organizations Online is the most up-to-date and comprehensive reference to International Organizations. Not just a directory of names and addresses, the database gives you the most detailed and up-to-date profiles of organizations at work in the world today. Directly reflecting a dynamic international arena, it contains entries on nearly 63,000 international nongovernmental and intergovernmen-tal organizations active in almost 300 countries and territories. It includes all types of organizations, from formal structures to informal networks, from professional bodies to recreational clubs. The database is edited and hosted by the Union of International Associations (UIA) in Brussels, Belgium. How to use Yearbook of International Organizations Online Go to the Yearbook of International Organizations Online URL with your Internet browser. You will see the following screen:

You now have the following options:

1. Enter a search term in the search field and select the appropriate index as shown above

2. Perform a search through the alphabetic index

3. Perform a search through the subject in-dex

Linked Databases Yearbook of International Organizations Online is extensively hyperlinked with other, free online databases of the Union of International Associa-tions. This ensures that the most complete over-view of organizations, their aims, missions and strategies can be given. The additional databases include:

- Who’s Who in International Organizations - World Problems – Issues - Global Strategies – Solutions - Bibliographic sources (for Organizations

and Issues) - Human Development - Human Values

The system is preset to search in the International Organizations database, but it will remember the selected database from the last login, so it may be necessary to change the selection by clicking on the appropriate name in the scroll down box as shown below:

Searching for Organizations by name or acronym Available on the main search page, the entry field allows you to search for full organization names in different languages, parts of names or even their acronyms. To search for the organization profile of UNICEF, the United Nation’s Children’s Fund, enter the full name, parts of the name or the acronym in the search field and click on “search”. In the first step you will receive a hit list with matching organizations for the search term:

The hit list repeats the search term and offers the option to refine the search with a different term.

It is possible to navigate through the hit list with the arrow keys, should the list be longer than one page. The hits are listed in the order with which they are returned from the database. It is possible to switch on/ off the option to list alternative (multi-language) titles of the retrieved organizations. Analysis function: This option allows the experienced user to list the hits of a particular search in a table and sort them by different criteria such as type of organization, name in different languages, founding year, number of links in the profile etc. This function is, for example, useful for getting an indication of the importance of an organization by looking at the number of links within an organization profile.

The above list is sorted in reverse alphabetical order by the English name of the institution, as indicated by the red arrow in the column heading. Display of Organization Profiles An organization profile is selected by clicking on the organization name link in the hit list.

The organization profile lists

- Organization names, including multilin-gual variants;

- Logo if available - Name of Director, addresses of main of-

fices including URL - Organization‘s history and aims, structure,

activities and events - Languages, Staff and Finances - Intergovernmental (IGO) and

Nongovernmental (NGO) Relations - Memberships by country

- Publications by title - Problems the organization deals with and

its strategies in doing so

The profile is highly interlinked with the other databases of the UIA mentioned above, namely the “Who’s who in International Organizations” database, giving biographical details of the people in important positions in International Organi-zations. Options: The profile page offers the possibility to turn options on or off. The options include

- the listing of all field names, even when a field is not populated.

- access to the official field description of each field by clicking on the “?” button

- when available access to maps to see a javascript visualization of an organiza-tion’s relationship to other organizations (explanation see below)

Searching for Organizations by country With Yearbook of International Organizations Online it is possible to find out which International Organizations have their headquarters or a sec-retarial office in a certain country and town. To do this, select the search field Country on the main search page and type in the name of the country. The following example is for searching organiza-tions in Germany:

The hit list screen gives in this case information on how many organizations have their headquar-ters or secretarial offices in Germany. By clicking on the name of the country it is now possible to select a city in this country and to find out which organizations have their offices in that city:

Scroll through the hit list with the links “next” and “previous” until you get to the point in the list with the city you have looked for. The screen shows that 214 International Organizations have their headquarters (HQ) in the city of Berlin, and 42 Organizations have secretarial offices (Sec.) there. By clicking either on the figure for the HQ offices or the figure in the column “Town (Sec.)”, a list of all organizations with these offices in this city will be displayed as a hit list which makes accessing the full Organizations profile very easy. In addition to the search options on the main page, Yearbook of International Organizations Online also offers the possibility to search through index lists for the required information: Searching through the alphabetic index All databases on the Union of International Asso-ciations server (see above for the list of data-bases) have alphabetic index lists as an additional entry point to access the information. Clicking on the link to the “alphabetic index” on the main search page of the International Organi-zations database, will produce the alphabetic in-dex for this database.

The user now has the possibility to select the ap-propriate letter in the index to get a listing of all organization names beginning with this letter in alphabetical order. Navigation within a letter is possible through links “Next” and “Previous” at the bottom of the page of entries. It is also possible to go to the index of indices page to select the index of a different database, to change to the subject index or to get back to the main database page by selecting “live database search”. Searching through the subject index The subject index uses a classification set up specifically by the Union of International Associations (UIA).

The first screen shows the main categories. Clicking on the category name will take the user to a screen listing the sub-categories for this topic:

The subject index can be used to look up profiles of the organizations in the database Yearbook of International Organizations Online working in a specific area. Organizations can be accessed by clicking on the letter “O” in the sub-category listing shown above. The database will return a hit list for example as shown below with organizations working in the subject area “Whales, Dolphins”:

The appropriate organization is selected for full view by clicking on the organization name. Additionally the subject index also gives access to essays from the databases World Problems – Issues (marked as “P” in the sub-category index) and Global Strategies – Solutions (marked as “S”) on problems and solutions as perceived by inter-national constituencies:

Therefore it provides access to the broader context in which international organizations work in the world today. The essays on problems and solutions are created most usually from publicly available sources of information and are updated in a participative process with users of the information. Example of a hit list for the entries from World Problems – Issues on the subject “Whales, Dol-phins”:

Essay entry on “Whale beaching”, listing also alternative problem descriptions:

Additional Features Visualization experiments: The Union of International Associations is faced with a major challenge of how to provide greater insight into complex networks of relationships amongst international organizations, world prob-lems, strategies in response to them, human de-velopment and human values. Several visualiza-tion techniques are therefore employed to display these complex relationships. The databases therefore offer at certain points the option to view maps and visualization experiments.

Further information on the UIA’s initiative in this matter can be found at: http://www.uia.org/altermedia/home.php Translation feature: The database interface offers a link to Altavista’s Babel Fish service indicated with the little fish icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen. With this service users can translate passages of text or entire Web pages among nine languages. Please note, however, that Yearbook of Interna-tional Organizations Online is a subscription based service which authenticates users of this service through IP-recognition or username/pass-word check. Using Bable Fish will not work direct-ly from database pages. A work-around solution is to copy the text a user wants to translate from the database and directly paste it in the Babel Fish translation box. Further information Organization profiles from the database Yearbook of International Organizations Online can be printed through the browser’s print function. Organization profiles in the database are not defi-nite. Each entry in the database is verified directly by the international organization profiled, each organization profile contains the date when the profile was last updated. The UIA ensures that organization profiles which are not updated in a certain time-frame will get a notice next to the organization name stating: “Inactive according to information available to the UIA”. Each organization profile additionally offers a specific e-mail address for this profile in its footer. If incorrect information is noticed in this profile, the user is advised to send an e-mail to this address notifying the editors.

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K.G. Saur Verlag / A Thomson Learning Company September 2003