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Organization of American States (OAS)

Containing publications of the Organization of American States, the world’s oldest regional organization, whose membership consists of 34 independent countries of the Americas and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Classification of Official Documents

Classification refers to the organizational system for OAS publications devised in the Classification Manual for the OAS Official Records Series. The Manual was first issued in 1977 and incorporates official documents published after January 1960. Official documents published before January 1960 were not retroactively classified. Informational and technical publications of the General Secretariat are classified separately as the Informational and Technical Publications series of the General Secretariat.

Research pro tip: Series G: Documents of the Permanent Council (Formerly the Council) of the OAS and its Committees represent the most important and heavily-requested documents produced by the OAS!

The components of the classification system are:

  • OEA, for General Secretariat Publications
    • SG, for General Secretariat Publications not covered by the series
    • UP, for Pan American Union
  • Ser., which stands for Series
  • A capital letter, representing the 26 main Series

The classification block will also generally contain the following:

  • Number of the document within the series and any applicable edition statement (Revision, Addendum, Corrigendum)
  • Registration date
  • Original language (Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, or Textual)
  • a "Distribution Limited" notation when the document is not available to the public

Users are able to browse, search, and restrict search results by classification series.

A special note about the JX classification: The material in the JX collection is not included in the classification manual because they are official documents produced before the series system was created in 1960. The materials in the JX collection are of high historical value as they encompass the earliest documents of the official meetings and conferences of the organization, dating back to 1889.