Ever needed to find out who was the Vietnamese ambassador in 1987? Did you seek to find a list of all Togolese ambassadors from the 1970s? Who were the members of the Chilean Mission in 1965?
If you ever had a question like this and if you had the opportunity to speak with a UN research librarian then you may have been informed that the best source for answering them is the Blue Book, a list of the representatives of Member States to the United Nations.
For some time, in order to find historical information librarians and researchers regularly had to consult the print copies held by the Library – a very time-consuming process.
But now the Dag Hammarskjöld Library has successfully digitized 276 volumes of the Blue Book covering the period from 1946 to 1994. As from this year onward, the Blue Book was published in digital format, the complete collection from 1946 up to today is now conveniently accessible and searchable in the UN Digital Library.
The Blue Book is prepared by the UN Protocol and Liaison Service as a service to delegations and Secretariat staff. It comprises comprehensive lists of permanent missions of Member States, permanent observer missions, and permanent observer offices accredited to the United Nations. The official title of the New York edition is “Permanent Missions to the United Nations”, but it is better known by its popular title which it owes to the cover color of the earlier print edition.
The listings are based on information that is communicated to the Protocol and Liaison Service by the permanent missions, and they are updated regularly. A real-time version of the current Blue Book is available on the Protocol website, but changes to print versions were recorded in weekly addenda. The UN Library holds the physical copies of these addenda and is working to make them available online.
Access the Blue Book in the UN Digital Library.
