HURIDOCS gladly announces a new series of brief, practical manuals aimed to help build the capacity of human rights organisations with regard to monitoring and documentation. The Human Rights Monitoring and Documentation Series consists of two kinds of manuals: a "what is" manual provides an overview of a certain topic, and a "how to" manual is meant to impart specific skills. HURIDOCS will publish and distribute the following in 2001:

What is Monitoring What is Documentation How to Set Up Your Documentation Centre How to Index How to Search for Information How to Record Names of Persons The volumes in this Series are especially designed for small non-governmental human rights organisations which often have limited resources and a small staff who are assigned multiple tasks. The handy size of the manuals make them excellent reference materials. In addition, they are written in a style that facilitates learning and could serve effectively as materials for training, including individualised and self-initiated learning.

The first volume is now available on the HURIDOCS Web site . It is called What is Documentation. This practical manual is intended for documentalists and information workers of human rights organisations. It deals with the following issues: what is documentation, what is a document, why document, seeking information, producing documents, acquiring documents, organising documents and providing user services. This volume has been written by Manuel Guzman and Bert Verstappen.

This volume is available in English and in French. It can be printed in HTML and PDF formats.