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Archives of International Organisations based in Geneva

Guide listing the institutional archives of international organisations based in Geneva, supplemented with a few tips for searching for documents.

ITU – International Telecommunication Union

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU)

The ITU is one of the oldest international organisations. The ITU Archives collection cover:

  • Historic archives documenting the activities and administration of ITU.
  • A small set of world and regional maps of telecommunications networks prepared by ITU, 1875-1930.

Access Policy: The archives are open to the public by appointment with the archivist, and in accordance with the following access conditions:

  • records that were created for public dissemination or that were subsequently officially publicly disseminated are open to the public;
  • most other files may be consulted after a period of 30 years, measured from the date of the individual document or, in the case of a file, from the date of the most recent document in the file;
  • records containing personal data are closed to the public

Consultation: open to public reference and consultation by appointment only. Contact.

The ITU archives collection covers the period between 1865 and today. They include:

  • Conference and meeting documents
  • Administrative documents
  • Historic correspondence (1869-1947) and other operational and administrative records (1950-present)
  • ITU publications
  • Photographs
  • Maps world and regional maps of telecommunication networks, ca. 1875-1930

Official documents (ITU conferences, Constitution and Convention, reports, administrative regulations, rules of procedure, historical statistics, annual reports, reviews, tables of artificial satellites) are available via the ITU’s Digital Collections:

Published works - books, reports, journals, and data, in both paper and electronic format - related to telecommunications can be consulted via the ITU Library catalogue.

Library and archive guide