Pierre-Yves Saunier

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Those searching online for a current directory of international organizations will invariably come across the Yearbook of International Organizations edited by the Union of International Associations. Over the years, its publisher has repeatedly assured potential readers that this is the reference work they are looking for. For instance, a promotional brochure from 2011-12 describes the UIA as 'a non-profit, independent, apolitical, and non-governmental institutions' that operated 'in the service of international associations', undertaking such work '[s]ince its foundation in 1907'. The leaflet extolls the Yearbook's virtues: 'The approach is scientific, the result is quality. The information presented by the UIA is structured, comprehensive and concise.' 1 Statements of objectivity, independence, continuity and comprehensiveness are expected from any reference work, but the Yearbook and its publishers have shown a particular gusto for such claims. In the 1990s, its US distributor hailed it as 'the most complete source of information on international bodies available anywhere' and repeated a review proclaiming 'here's everything you could possibly want to know about international organizations'. 2 Such brazen statements have attracted little scrutiny. Commentators and scholars largely seem to take the comprehensiveness, accuracy, coverage and consistence of the UIA's volumes for granted. Consider the Yearbook of Civil Society series, until recently the flagship of the Global Civil Society Programme at the London School of Economics. It relies heavily on the raw data and statistical visualizations of the Yearbook of International Organizations to assess, chart and map the rise and evolution of international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). 3 But it does not comment about the data itself. We need to contrast this stance with Daniel Laqua's comment that the UIA's founders 'sought to validate their efforts by demonstrating the extent of "international life" -and in so doing, generated data that has informed the work of subsequent generations '. 4 This self-fulfilling prophecy often goes under the radar: the Annuaire de la Vie Internationale -published before the First World War and acknowledged as a forerunner of the Yearbook -was part and parcel of an attempt to organize, strengthen and support international life. 5 This sends us back to the claim about the UIA being 'apolitical' and its work 'scientific'. In fact, the organization's internationalism was a political project that championed a specific version of global order, and was defended as such by its founders and subsequent leaders. The scientific investigation of internationalism that they claimed to pursue was meant to prove that international life expanded and mattered, and that their political internationalism was rooted in an objective observation of the world. The registration and categorization of organizations itself has been, and remains, a political project that embodies and shapes worldviews. 6 Choices as to publication language -notably the switch to English in the 1950s -cannot be understood as apolitical either. The promotional material also stresses 'independence' -yet for decades, and in the very pages of the Yearbook, the UIA emphasized its close links with the United Nations Organization and its agencies. Furthermore, the 2011-

2012 brochure implicitly suggests that the observation and registration of 'international civil society' has been going on since 1907 -which does not mesh with the patchy and uneven publication record of the Yearbook and its forerunners. Another descriptor, 'non-profit', places the Union out of the materialistic realm, on a par with the disinterested international organizations it purports to document. Yet, with a subscription fee of between € 2,200 and 2,600 for the last three editions, the Yearbook is also a commercial product. All claims made in the UIA's promotional material thus beg for critical interrogation.

This chapter starts from a series of questions that emerge from my perception of contrasts between public presentation and liminal historical knowledge, between widespread usage and limited critical appraisal. What is the Yearbook's publication history, and why did its style and substance change over time? What were the aims and methods of these datagathering attempts, and how were they connected to a project of building up what was called 'internationalism' at the beginning of the twentieth century, and 'transnational civil society' or 'global civil society' in the early twenty-first century? Why were third parties interested by the identification and classification of international organizations that got involved in the publication of the Yearbook and predecessors? Who were the readers of the Annuaire and Yearbook, and how did they use these works? I will strive to answer these questions, assembling a critical biography of the Yearbook and other directories associated with the UIA, examining their production, diffusion and reception.

Publishing directories of international organizations

The Annuaire emerged from a series of actions and reflections launched in the late 1890s by the Belgians Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. The two men sought to foster coordination and collaboration between international organizations based in Brussels, including those of their own creation (International Office of Bibliography, International Institute of Bibliography). [START_REF] Rasmussen | L'Internationale scientifique', chap 5 and Rayward[END_REF] Otlet's notes suggest that the idea crystallized in the summer of 1905, as he sketched the creation of a 'central body' that would 'group together and develop the existing or to be created international institutions'. 8 The tasks of this organisme comprised the publication of annuaires (yearbooks) with a mission to document international scientific congresses, libraries, institutes and publications. 9 Backed up by La Fontaine, Otlet discussed his ideas with several individuals.

As noted in Boyd Rayward's contribution to this book, one of them was Cyril Van Overbergh, an eminent civil servant with responsibilities for higher learning, sciences and the arts as well as a protagonist of the sociological milieu to which Otlet and La Fontaine belonged. [START_REF] Wouter Van Acker | Sociology in Brussels, Organicism and the Idea of a World Society in the Period before the First World War[END_REF] The other was Ernest Solvay, the leading private sponsor of scientific institutions in Belgium. [START_REF] Coupain | Ernest Solvay's Scientific Networks: From Personal Research to Academic Patronage[END_REF] The latter's note of rejection, which indicted the vagueness and excessive remit of the project, [START_REF] Solvay | Congrès Mondial' in 'Chemise 1. La fondation[END_REF] was compensated by the commitment of the former. Otlet and Van Overbergh pushed ahead in 1906, intertwining the idea with other endeavours.

The Office Central des Institutions Internationales (Central Office of International Institutions) was created in 1907. That year, Van Overbergh published a survey of a new sociological phenomenon: the international association. 13 Its findings were based on a threepage questionnaire sent to 97 international bureaus, unions and societies -almost exclusively in Europe and overwhelmingly in French-speaking countries. Alfred Fried, who had edited an Annuaire de la vie internationale since 1905, likely provided the addresses for recipients of the questionnaire. Yet the connection with Fried was more than practical: Fried and the leaders of the Central Office shared a passion for bibliography, a commitment to peace activism and the vision of an increasingly interdependent planet. 14 For them, the growing number of international associations and congresses was both proof and promise of that interdependence.

Accordingly, a practical science of internationalism was needed to document and support this growth and help to 'organize the world', to use Fried's motto. As the vector for this practical science, the four men considered transforming Fried's volume, with its uneven entries about international associations, into a systematization of Van Overbergh's detailed survey of international associations' organization, rules and activities. The resulting contract between Fried, La Fontaine and Otlet stipulated that the Central Office would assemble, print, sell and distribute the Annuaire each year from 1908 onwards, while Fried would keep the property of the title and receive an honorarium for his editorial contribution. 15 The Central Office -transformed into the UIA in 1910-1911 -printed editions of the Annuaire for 1908-1909 and 1910-1911, portraying them as vehicles for the UIA's 'permanent enquiry into international organization'. 16 They were published in French, like Fried's previous editions, but whereas the latter had between 160 and 250 pages, the former were hefty volumes of respectively 1,551 and 2,652 pages, providing information on about 300 and 500 organizations respectively. What remained similar was the distribution of organizations between 'official international life' -bureaus, unions and conferences borne out of agreements between governments -and 'private international life', that is, international associations. The new Annuaire had detailed entries for all: several pages packed with statutes, board and committees members, incomes and expenses, documentary and artefact collections. It also contained chapters documenting the work of the Central Office and the editors' take on international life. The research was not done in-house: in line with the notion of a permanent survey, and in view of the Office's limited resources, the Annuaires relied on the organizations' self-reporting by way of questionnaires.

The increased content of the 1910-1911 edition was made possible by a 15,000 US $ grant (75,000 Belgian francs) from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, provided in December 1911 for the year 1912. The Carnegie Endowment was just beginning its operations, and had decided to support selected peace organizations in Europe -a development that is also being discussed in Christophe Verbruggen's contribution to this volume. [START_REF] Butler | series III Division of Intercourse and education[END_REF] Carnegie funding was a boon to the meagre resources of the Office, amounting to 90 per cent of its 1912 income. [START_REF]Associations internationales à la Carnegie Endowment for International Peace[END_REF] Otlet and La Fontaine underlined that it was nowhere near their initial request of no less than 75,000 US $, but took great care to send one of the first copies of the new and expanded Annuaire to Nicholas Murray Butler, the Endowment's president.

The 1912-1913 edition of the Annuaire was never published. With Otlet and La Fontaine having left Brussels early in the war, a small team kept on working under Van Overbergh. [START_REF]For the origins of that collection, Madeleine Herren-Oesch '"Outwardly... an Innocuous Conference Authority": National Socialism and the Logistics of International Information Management[END_REF] In the string of letters whereby he and Otlet begged for the Endowment's continued support, La Fontaine wrote in April 1915 that the new Annuaire had been 'nearly completed and the half of it was printed last July. It could have been published in November.' 20 Yet minutes of the meetings in Brussels make it clear that work was still ongoing, to a point where, as of October 1916, material grew so large that two volumes would have been necessary.

In light of its limited resources, the Brussels team shifted gear and considered publishing a compact 300-page version, nicknamed 'Annuaire-résumé '. Chapters for the Annuaire-résumé were being edited in spring 1917 when everything stalled: UIA resources had been strained beyond breaking point. When activities resumed after the war, neither the 1918-1919 minutes of the Union's bureau meetings, nor the many letters sent to the Carnegie Endowment to solicit funding, suggest that Union leaders considered the publication of this material, or any new edition of the Annuaire, as a future milestone. The Union's 'formidable tasks' lay elsewhere.

Otlet and La Fontaine's priority was to find a place for the Union within the new family of international organizations that developed after the Armistice, including inter-allied associations and the League of Nations. This concern to liaise with the League was at the origin of a new directory of international organizations. In 1919-1920, Inazō Nitobe, under-secretary of the League, was in charge of connecting with international associations as the fledgling League Secretariat was eager to make sense of its environment. After his first visit to Brussels, he saw the pre-war Annuaire as a navigation tool within the world of private associations, and asked Otlet and La Fontaine to revise their list of associations for the use of League staff and delegates to the League Assembly. [START_REF] Nitobe | List of international bureaux etc', Registry Files 1919-1927, R 1004[END_REF] The correspondence offers no hints of a joint League-UIA endeavour to revive the Annuaire. Nor was the Annuaire anywhere in the plan that the Union sent to the League when La Fontaine and Otlet tried to counter the French proposal for the creation of a bureau for international intellectual work. [START_REF] Saikawa | From Intellectual Co-operation to International Cultural Exchange: Japan and China[END_REF] Instead, this first list was the foundation for the League's own work in publishing a directory of international organizations.

In 1921, the League's 'International Bureaux' section published the Répertoire des organisations internationales/Handbook of International Organizations, which it expanded in subsequent editions. The Répertoire/Handbook, alternatively issued in French and English, or both, was a smaller in-octavo volume, which grew from 167 pages in 1921 to some 500 in the late 1930s. Unlike the UIA's earlier Annuaire, it did not carry editorial chapters. It did, however, feature informative sections about the League and encompassed private and governmental international organizations. Its compact entries, from a few lines to one page, compiled essential information as in figure 9.1. For the League Secretariat, documenting international groups went beyond the mere implementation of article 24 of the Covenant and its brief to collect information about international offices established by treaties between governments. It was a matter of identifying the League's supporters, constituency and partners beyond national governments. As the League's procedures and apparatus were developed, representatives and members of international associations were asked to contribute. Moreover, many of them did not wait for invitations from Geneva and began to press for their causes by targeting the new institutions.

Within this context, it was vital to know who was who and who made what. [START_REF] Mccarthy | The British People and the League of Nations: Democracy, Citizenship and Internationalism, c.1918-1945[END_REF] The Handbook answered this need, and during the interwar years it served as a low-intensity tool for international governance. [START_REF]Other repertories were published at the time: one example is a competing handbook[END_REF] The UIA had no connection to the publication of these volumes, save for providing the 1919 list that was used by League people to send questionnaires for the 1921 Handbook (self-reporting was still the method for collecting information). Despite subsequent UIA claims that the League's publication 'prevented' the Union to resume the Annuaire's publication after the Great War, [START_REF] Patrick | A Glance at Sixty Years of Activity (1910-1970) of the Union of International Associations[END_REF] no mentions of such a project can be found while Otlet and La Fontaine focused on projects such as the Musée International, the Quinzaine Internationale, the Université Internationale and the Cité Mondiale. 26 The Second World War seriously affected all the organizations created by La Fontaine and Otlet. [START_REF] Lévie | L'homme qui voulait classer le monde: Paul Otlet et le Mundaneum[END_REF] The latter was ousted from his leadership positions in 1941, despite his attempts to entice German authorities to support its work. As noted in Christophe Verbruggen's chapter, the Union itself was taken over by the Nazi apparatus, as many other international associations in occupied Europe. [START_REF] Mazower | Penguin, 2012), chap. 6. 29 Herren 'Outwardly[END_REF] The UIA's library and files were raided by occupation authorities, destroyed or brought to Germany to be used by the Deutsche Kongress-Zentrale, a governmental agency in charge of managing German participation into international associations and meetings. 29 With La Fontaine and Otlet having died in 1943 and 1944, the post-war UIA was very much an empty shell, unable to be a protagonist in the organization of a new international order. As Nico Randeraad and Philip Post have shown in the present volume, it was only at the beginning of 1948 that a provisory committee took the decision to revive its activities, thanks to a bequest by La Fontaine. By then, others had already taken the initiative in terms of directories of international organizations.

Two Swiss journalists, Marcel Henchoz and René-Henri Wust created a society to publish a directory whose first edition was published in Geneva in the spring of 1948. [START_REF]Wust took up journalism after the war[END_REF] This Annuaire des organisations internationales / Yearbook of International Organizations was presented as a guide for all those who had to find their bearings in the new and teeming international life. Entries with generic information covered the new United Nations Organization and its agencies, as well as older inter-governmental unions and 'nongovernmental organizations'. It alternated between French and English, matching the language in which the information was collected. The quality was uneven: the volume captured organizations created as recently as 1947, but many old organizations were not included and many entries were hardly documented.

The new publication boldly claimed to be the first to offer a synthesis of increasing relationships between nations, as embodied in international organizations. It did not acknowledge Annuaires or Handbooks. This edition was followed by a second one in 1949, with 650 international organizations described. The third edition, in 1950, was still under the copyright of Henchoz and Wust's society, but the UIA appeared as a co-editor. [START_REF] Patrick | Speeckaert later wrote that the Geneva publishers approached the Union: 'Ouvrages de référence sur les organisations et réunions internationales[END_REF] This agreement had been announced to the readers of the Bulletin de l'Union des Associations internationales in January 1950, following a teaser in December 1949. [START_REF]We shall hope to publish quite soon, a Hand-book with remarks on the organisations actually active at the moment': 'Statistical and Chronological Table of International Organisations[END_REF] Yet, when it was published in June 1950, with 980 pages and entries for 1,000 organizations, the organization of the volume and the coverage of the entries were not significantly different from the previous edition -save for the addition of a Universal Decimal Classification number for each organization in true UIA fashion. No traces have been found of further negotiations between the two parties, but in August 1951 the UIA's periodical announced that the Yearbook was now the 'sole property' of the Union. [START_REF]Échos du centre de service UAI[END_REF] A new editorial process was presented in the same article, and trumpeted in subsequent advertisements carried by the Union's Bulletin as in Figure 9. Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC). In 1949, Aake Ording, a Norwegian member of the UN staff, was assigned to examine a new programme and structure for the UIA. 34 Results began to emerge one year later. In July 1950, the General Conference of Consultative Non-Governmental Organizations formally expressed its interest in transforming the UIA into a service centre for INGOs. [START_REF]The Third Conference of Consultative Non-Governmental Organizations[END_REF] This was the emphasis of Ording's plan, whose report listed the technical tasks such a centre would fulfil, including 'to collect and distribute information on international NGOs, through a Bulletin, a Handbook and otherwise '. [START_REF] Ording | In the Service of International Progress[END_REF] Ording followed his scheme from inception to its adoption in United Nations meetings -a process that is discussed in greater depth in Nico Randeraad and Philip Post's chapter. [START_REF]Ording applied for grants by the Ford Foundation for turning the UIA into a 'service center for INGOs'. Ford Foundation memos mention Ording's 'extreme aggressiveness' in this occasion[END_REF] In July 1950, ECOSOC adopted a resolution that sanctioned the scheme: the resolution thwarted the project of a UN-made handbook on non-governmental organizations. Instead, it asked the UN Secretary-General to rely on the UIA's Yearbook, and to cooperate with the latter, firmly installing Ording's scheme on the UN side. 38 The Union itself revised its statutes and published them in November 1950. There was a new name ('Union of International Associations. Service Centre for International Non-Governmental Organizations') and a new governing structure where representatives from inter-governmental and non-governmental organizations were prominent. There were specific missions too, including to '1) collect information about international, non-governmental, nonprofit making Organizations; 2) place this information in the bands (sic) and at the disposition of all interested persons and to ensure its distribution '. 39 This UN-driven reinvention needs to be understood in light of Article 71 of the United Nations charter, which called for 'suitable arrangements for consultation with nongovernmental organizations' as part of the ECOSOC's operations -a scheme soon replicated with specialized UN agencies. As a result, the list of associations requesting or obtaining consultative status quickly swelled. [START_REF]Cf. the growing list of organizations with consultative status in Yearbook of the United Nations in 1946-1947[END_REF] A minor element in this wider process, the Yearbook was necessary for the UN to steer its relations with other international organizations. It became the touchstone of the new UIA, whose redefined governance and brief ensured that it would provide services to the United Nations and to INGOs, and cooperate with the UN in publishing the Yearbook. 41 This entailed constraints that have shaped the content of the Yearbook until today: the definition of criteria for inclusion in consultation with ECOSOC officials; [START_REF] Judge | Report of a preliminary investigation of the possibility of using computer data processing methods', appendix 1 'Analysis of internal and external factors which may influence the future of the organization[END_REF] the obligation to include in the Yearbook, regardless of other criteria, every INGO that received consultative status with the UN (a heavily politicized process during the Cold War); [START_REF]First mention in 'Types of organization[END_REF] and the coverage of both IGOs and INGOs alongside one another. But it also gave the Union a status as publisher of a directory with strong connections to the core of the international system. This role was valued, cherished and protected as a monopoly. 44 Until 1980, the Union published the Yearbook every two years, save for a three-year gap between the 1951-1952 and 1954-1955 editions. Except three editions in French, the other fifteen used English, sometimes with a supplementary index in French or other languages.

Despite the growth in the number of entries, the individual entries kept the same framework over time.

Eyvind Siegfried Tew and Anthony Judge were the two UIA staff members who shaped the Union's Yearbook publication during this period. From his obituaries, we can gain some glimpses of Tew's background: coming from a Quaker family, seasoned traveller, a speaker of many different European languages (plus Esperanto), this British citizen spent the war years as a cryptographer for the British intelligence service. He was brought into the Yearbook set-up for copy-editing work by Peter Hunot, H.G. Wells's former secretary and an advocate for world government, who edited the 1951-1952 edition. In 1956, a Ford Foundation grant made it possible to hire Tew on a permanent basis. He settled down in Brussels in October 1956 as editor of the Yearbook and other UIA publications until 1975. Anthony Judge is an Australian who was born in Egypt in 1940 and grew up in Zimbabwe. [START_REF]Himself being reluctant to answer further questions[END_REF] Judge's first contact with the Union was in 1961-1963, when he worked as an intern assistant-editor for the Yearbook. [START_REF]The Union of International Associations A Profile[END_REF] Five years later, aged 28, he returned as a consultant while finishing his MBA thesis at the University of Cape Town. He was then hired by the Union, editing its periodical Transnational Associations from 1969 to 1978, and in parallel developing computer-based resources that fuelled the Yearbook and other UIA publications. Judge became the major editorial force in the Yearbook after 1980 and occupied different executive positions, including that of acting general-secretary. These Yearbook editors -just as the Union's successive general secretaries (Georges Patrick Speeckaert, 1950-1970; Robert Fenaux, 1970-1985) -were not major internationalist authors in the vein of Otlet and La Fontaine, but their trajectories and their writings, including the Yearbook's forewords, underline that they were just as dedicated to the cause of cooperation through international organization.

In-house publishing stopped in 1981 with the Yearbook's nineteenth edition, copublished by the UIA and the International Chamber of Commerce. This one-off collaboration may have been connected with difficulties for the Union to edit and distribute the Yearbook on its own, as suggested by its next move. The venture with the Chamber of Commerce having been found unsatisfactory, [START_REF] Judge | Sharing a Documentary Pilgrimage[END_REF] Judge asked Karl Saur, whose company had been distributing UIA publications in Germany since 1974, whether he would add the publication of the Yearbook to their joint activities. From 1983, the Yearbook was published by the Munich-based firm and reinvented in style and substance. Its size incrementally augmented with successive editions. This expansion partly followed the increase in number of international organizations included in the Yearbook, but it chiefly resulted from a clear desire to create a gamut of products.

New volumes added to the ones that described international organizations according to the framework established by the Handbook (location, foundation, aims, activities, finance, members,…). From the 1983-1984 edition, there appeared a geographic volume listing organizations by places (membership and secretariats) and a subject volume arranging organizations by subjects, completed by a bibliographic volume in 1995-1996, and finally a volume of data analysis (statistics and visualizations) with the 2001-2002 set. From 1994 to 2008, the Yearbook was also published on CD-Rom (including a French version and some segments in Spanish and German), and in 2004 it went online. This growth in size and sophistication of data presentation was made possible by the 1972 decision to shift data management from the filing cabinet to the computer. [START_REF] Judge | Information Culture of the Union of International Associations, a Historical Review[END_REF] The transition materialized first in the printing production process, later in indexation and visualization, and eventually in the diffusion of the Yearbook itself. The contract with Saur and the computerization also resulted in other publications derived from Yearbook data: specialized directories of international organizations in Africa and the Arab world (1984-1985) Yearbook is now one of the assets showcased in presentations of Brill's portfolio, 50 amongst a number of series and periodicals connected to Public International Law, Human Rights, Humanitarian Law and increasingly International Relations. This might have been the reason for publishers' interest for this reference work on international organizations, and this brings our attention to its trajectory as a commercial product.

Distributing directories of international organizations

In 1950, a footnote in the Bulletin of the Union des Associations Internationales mentioned that copies of the Annuaire were still available for sale. They could be obtained for 300 Belgian francs a piece, or 500 for the two editions, plus postal fees. [START_REF]Union des associations internationales[END_REF] There are no clues that customers rushed for the occasion, but it sounds surprising that the Union or its printer still held copies of the Annuaire some forty years after publication. One of the scarce archival clues about the distribution of the Annuaire is a 1929 buying order found in Paul Otlet's correspondence. 52 The sender was the World Peace Foundation, a pacifist body connected to Tufts University in Massachusetts. Trying to trace this specific copy reveals that the current World Peace Foundation does not have an online library catalogue, which illustrates the difficulties of appraising the presence of the Annuaire in private libraries. The other clue is a note scribbled by a League of Nations employee in 1919: 'I am told that there are only three copies of this in England, and we are trying to borrow a copy from one of the owners.' [START_REF] Lloyd | Registry Files[END_REF] The library trail can be pursued further, though. As of April 2016, print copies of the Annuaire can be found into 101 public libraries in Europe and North America according to Worldcat. [START_REF]the Annuaire's identification is difficult because of catalogues' confusion or lack of precision regarding the presence of one or both the two editions. Moreover, Worldcat only aggregates a limited numbers of public libraries catalogues, with uneven coverage of and within countries, and has a strong bias for university libraries[END_REF] Whether or not the Annuaire was bought by the public libraries who now hold it, when exactly, or whether other library copies of those big volumes with a fragile binding were discarded, owing to bad conditions or obsolescence, is not known. Likewise, we do not have any clues about the associations, diplomatic services, individual scholars and activists that may have obtained a copy of the Annuaire.

Can we appraise the dissemination of the Annuaire in the light of such limited information? The only tack for those 101 copies in public libraries is provided by the invoices of the printer who worked for Central Office in 1913: Oscar Lamberty bound exactly 202 volumes of the 1910-1911 Annuaire, in two runs, which added to a previous batch of 6 copies that were sent to very important personalities. 55 Thus, the Annuaire fares well when its presence in public libraries fares is compared to the print run of its first edition. [START_REF]Not much can be done of the national or regional distribution of holdings because their presence or absence is biased by the multiple filters[END_REF] I might be chasing the wrong rabbit, though. If Otlet and La Fontaine papers do not include sales figures, customer lists or complaints about postal deliveries, this is not merely the result of archival mishaps. Sales were just not a priority. A note sheet of the budget of the Office Central between 1907 and 1911 leaves a telling blank in the line 'vente de l'Annuaire' for the 'income' column. 57 Otlet and La Fontaine openly stated their position in their 1911 memorandum to the trustees of the Carnegie Endowment: 'It was necessary to distribute a great number of complimentary [Annuaire] copies to persons and institutions which would have been obliged to buy the publication.' [START_REF]La Fontaine to Scott[END_REF] As La Fontaine later wrote, the Annuaire belonged to 'the category [of publications for which] it is impossible to rely on the usual publishers, and which can find buyers in sufficient numbers to cover their expenses only after several years of publication. Besides, they ought to be free of any mercantile concern, inadequate with the greatness of the movement they have to serve.' [START_REF]Rapport sur l'Office central des associations internationales présenté à la Carnegie endowment for international peace[END_REF] True to such views, the 1912 report only included figures on 'possible' and 'indispensable' expenses, but none about income. [START_REF]The back matter is rarely included in the digitised version available from the Union's website, but no insert with information for[END_REF] In addition to this elision of commercialization, the very conception of the Annuaire was barely conducive to it. Conceived as a 'permanent inquiry' about international associations, the Annuaire was to include 'as many documents as possible'. 61 This did not set the table for a regular, predictable and marketable publication. The absence of subscription campaigns, save for the first edition, as well as the absence of commercial advertisements in the Annuaire, confirm the impression: selling the Annuaire, or even covering its costs, was not a priority.

Conversely, the post-1945 Yearbook was conceived as a commercial venture. This was conspicuous in the typesetting of the first edition, with its many advertisements. Local advertisements such as those in Figure 9.3 suggest that it targeted people who, having come to Geneva to support the work of international organizations, sought information on that sphere of activity, or for services and goods serving the needs of visiting individuals and expatriated families. After returning to the UIA, the Yearbook maintained its identity of a practical volume to be sold to 'people in governmental and private positions of responsibility', 'all those in the diplomatic, governmental and intergovernmental services' as well as 'the sociologist, researcher, specialist and officer of international NGOs'. [START_REF]Introduction[END_REF] The revamped Union -now conceived as a service centre -marketed the Yearbook as a sober, reliable and easy-to-get product. Editorial statements about international cooperation were left to other UIA publications, while much was made to reach out to potential customers: the 1952 thank-you note for the forty-eight newspapers and journals that had published a review of the 1951-1952 edition shows that the Union did not spare on review copies. [START_REF]Échos de l'UAI centre de service[END_REF] Advertisements were also published, with a consistent series in the journal International Organization beginning in 1952. [START_REF]Advertisements have been found through the search engines of several platforms for digital versions of scientific journals (see below). Digitalization does not always include non editorial pages ([END_REF] The journal, created in 1947 by the aforementioned World Peace Foundation, was a place of convergence for researchers, officials and activists who believed in the new structure of international organization and who sought information about its development, and thus a well chosen outlet for Yearbook advertisements. Besides other scientific journals in international relations, the UIA and its distributors also targeted the periodicals of the American Library Association from the early 1950s. In different languages and for different audiences, these advertisements invariably emphasized the patronage of inter-governmental organizations and their contribution to the robustness of the information, together with the practicality of the volume (see Figure 9.4). To get hold of this appealing volume, a wide array of methods of payment was offered -from transfers to UIA bank accounts in six different countries to subscription through post offices or UNESCO book coupons. 65 The new Yearbook was to be bought, and the Union attended to it earnestly. Was it enough for the Yearbook to cover its expenses, or even be profitable for its mother house? Consistent sales figures are not available: older numbers have still to be found in UIA archives, and recent ones are considered confidential by the Union. 66 Nonetheless, incidental sources of information suggest that the Yearbook was not an instant or permanent bestseller, but became the major asset in the UIA catalogue. A first snapshot captures the 1951-1952 edition, thanks to a grant application that the UIA filed with the Ford Foundation in July 1954. General secretary Speeckaert mentioned a 5,000 US $ deficit for that edition, insisted on the extreme difficulty of covering the 1954-1955 edition's costs, and warned that the next couple of editions would likely end up in deficit, jeopardizing the UIA's very existence. [START_REF] Patrick | [END_REF] His next grant application suggests that Speeckaert had over-dramatized the situation -or misjudged the Ford Foundation grant-making criteria: the 1954-1955 edition had been 'more than self-supporting' according to an assessment of early 1956. [START_REF]The development of the UIA's resources coming from its publications[END_REF] This, however, was not the beginning of a soaring sales trend, as we can gather from another vantage point in the late 1960s. In addition to his 1968 report about the use of computer data-processing methods at UIA, Anthony Judge studied the activities, image and organization of the Union, including markets and competitors. His conclusion pinpointed the pivotal role of the Yearbook: 'The UIA has one very good publication on which its reputation and income has been built, namely the Yearbook of International Organizations. The production of this and improvement in its quality is the most important activity of the UIA.' 69 This appraisal was supported by the UIA's financial reports. They confirmed the Union's difficulties during the 1950s, when support from governments dwindled -especially from Belgium. [START_REF] Judge | Report of a Preliminary Investigation[END_REF] The Union's balance sheet was in the red between 1957 and 1961, recouped debts between 1962 and 1965 and returned to net profit in 1966. In addition to a three-year grant from the Ford Foundation that kept the organization afloat in 1956-1958, it was the growth of publication sales that put the Union back on its feet. Or, more accurately, the growth of Yearbook sales. Combined with low editorial cost, an increased print run and a rising price, shown in table 9.1, delivered a growing profit. 71 This was not the case with other UIA publications: between 1958 and 1968, the Yearbook was profitable all but 2 years for a grand total three times superior to the magazines of the Union, which were its second source of income -and its major source of expenditure. Balance sheets leave no doubt that the Union survived thanks to the Yearbook (English) editions, which paid for its other activities. Using material from the Union's distribution department, Judge broke down the sales of the 1966-1967 edition by country/continent and by type of buyer. [START_REF] Judge | [END_REF] Among identified buyers, the largest portion were in the USA (30 per cent) and 78 per cent came from five countries (USA, France, UK, Belgium, Switzerland). Distribution by type suggests that the Yearbook actually reached the constituencies claimed by the 1950 introductions: one third of identified sales was made to governmental and inter-governmental bodies, another third went to libraries -chiefly in the USA -while 21 % were sold to private organizations (mostly commercial and airline firms, but also travel agents and congress bureaus). Geographical comparison with the 1954-1955 Yearbook shows that the increase had taken place in countries and regions that were at the core of the new international order (the North Atlantic world) or were joining it (Africa, Asia) while it failed to attract buyers in the communist block: the Yearbook thrived in the parameters of a Cold War context. The 1966-1967 figures also showed that, while INGOs made for most of the organizations covered in the Yearbook, they only contributed a little segment of its identified customers (5 per cent of that total, less than airline companies). If that weak presence was to be confirmed by more complete information about buyers, the Yearbook diffusion would certainly contrast sharply with the UIA's aim to be a 'service centre' for INGOs. According to Judge, and besides their financial limitations, many

INGOs were reluctant to buy a volume for which they provided content: they saw the Union as a profit-making Belgian body with pretentions to organize INGOs and teach them what to do. [START_REF]of a volume when their own self-reporting was left unchecked[END_REF] This failure to tap into the INGOs segment was one of the weaknesses identified by Judge, together with the fact that the Union had not maintained a satisfactory sales information system, that its publications in general were under-advertised and that there was no systematic attempt to develop sales despite the increased interest in international affairs. [START_REF] Judge | [END_REF] To Judge, this was alarming because a growing number of specialized directories and registries competed with the Yearbook in different segments of the market. 75 Besides a counterfeiting publication, 76 a more serious potential danger existed: The Europa Yearbook, published every year, identified organizations absent from the Union's Yearbook, provided information in much greater detail, included national organizations of international relevance, and was distributed in retail outlets.

Moreover, it obviously drew some of its content from the Yearbook pages. The total number of organizations was still very inferior to that of the Yearbook -but if its publishers decided to expand their scope, then the Union's flagship might be in trouble, Judge warned. This seemed particularly problematic as little could be done to discourage a private publisher from walking on the Union's turf.

Undeterred by the recent disappointing direct mail campaign for the last edition (15,000 leaflets sent, nine order forms returned), Judge insisted that rising sales over the previous ten years showed that demand was robust and growing. Sales of the Yearbook were expandable if appropriate changes were made: a better connection with the Yearbook's information providers, an active search for correct, improved or missing information about international organizations, serious market research and sales analysis, new forms of advertisement, a larger staff, a wider remit to cover national organizations and a shrewd diversification plan -a Yearbook published every year and specialized directories that would prevent any newcomer to 'split the market'. Even the poor quality of the volume's cover called for improvement. In his final recommendations, Judge pushed the envelope further: 'The UIA should consolidate and cease production of all publications whose utility, readership or sales are unsatisfactory. It should concentrate on selling and improving the services related to the Yearbook of International Organizations.' 77 Given priority, the Yearbook would be the best tool for fulfilling what he deemed the best prospect for the Union at large: its work as a facilitator in 'bond formation within the world-system', weaving formal and informal links between international organizations. 78 The continuously increasing size, content and price of the Yearbook suggest that it has remained the bread and butter of the Union's visibility, revenues and activities until today.

Some hints show that the Union ran into cash flow problems in the mid-2000s, and the proposed solution was increased subscriptions to the Yearbook. [START_REF] Judge | UIA Survival: Separate Siamese Twins?[END_REF] In the absence of a robust series of sales figures, though, one can only speculate about the evolution of print and on line subscriptions, and the impact of new rival publications since 1968. According to Worldcat, the volume on international organizations that Gale Research added to its Encyclopedia of Associations in 1984 is now present in more US libraries than the Yearbook. 80 Anyhow, the Yearbook's gauge of enduring success might lie elsewhere: in its usage.

Using directories of international organizations

Directories of international organizations are barely credited with shaping the worldviews of their readers the way that encyclopaedias or dictionaries are. Only the occasional librarian mentioned that the Yearbook played a pivotal role in his training. [START_REF] Lyonette | In Memoriam: Adolf Sprudzs[END_REF] No clues have been found either about its daily use at airline companies and travel agencies, in governmental departments or in inter-governmental organizations. Yet, just as any other directory, the Yearbook was certainly often flicked through to find a telephone number, the name of an officer, or the aims of an organization. In his endorsement of the Yearbook, Wallace Atwood -director of the office of international relations at the US National Academy of Sciences and a member of the UIA's executive council -claimed that the volume stood 'at his fingertips ' and saved him 'hundreds of hours' when looking for accurate and current information on the organizations he had to deal with. [START_REF] Foreword | Yearbook of International Organizations[END_REF] Besides such passing mentions, specific users have left more durable traces: scholars and activists interested in the causes of peace, internationalism and international organization.

Accordingly, platforms of digitized academic journals can be used to recover their usage. [START_REF]The search for mentions of the Annuaire returned a few dozen hits, and a few hundreds for the Yearbook. Major biases derive from the remit of these resources and glitches in digitization. Online search did not return every relevant article, when compared[END_REF] They provide a sample which, although overdetermined by digital availability, suggests how the Annuaire and Yearbook have been reviewed and cited. A systematic analysis of the pieces that mentioned these volumes shows that they have been used in three major ways: as a beacon pointing to the world's future, a certificate of accuracy for facts and numbers, and a pool of data to assess trends and patterns in international organization.

While digitized journal collections only offer the briefest of mentions regarding the Annuaire's very first editions, the complimentary copies of the Central Office's 1908-1909 edition did reach a select number of go-betweens. These included protagonists of the peace movement where Fried, La Fontaine and Otlet were household names. Among those, none was more sanguine than William Stead, the English journalist and social reformer who -among other fiercely fought causes -advocated women's rights, peace and the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race. Stead's words, whose original place of publication I was unable to locate, were quoted in a couple of occasions by US pacifists. [START_REF] Allen | International Peace through Enlightened Self-Interest[END_REF] The Annuaire was also hailed in other journals with pacifist or internationalist leanings (Isis, American Journal of International Law, Revue internationale de droit privé). The 'magic carpet' still flew after the Second World War, with the 1951-1952 Yearbook edition being tagged in World Affairs as 'an eloquent testimonial to the way in which men of good will by international organization are implementing understanding on the basis of mutual interest and need throughout the world'. [START_REF] Kayser | Books[END_REF] Much more recently, the opening note of a publication emanating from the American Society of International Law mentioned (wrongly) that the non-existence of an annual of international organizations 'until 1957' was a sign that the number and importance of international organizations had been insignificant up to that point. 86 The Yearbook and its growing content have thus been interpreted as a record of current trends in the international order, a 'weighty evidence (in both senses of the term) of how trans-frontier cooperation has been speeding up'. 87 This analogon, which was also embedded in editorial texts within the Yearbook itself, made it possible for reviewers to vouch for the world's evolution towards integration and cooperation.

Such mentions, which often appeared in journals committed to the project of international organization or 'peace research', were nonetheless quite limited: they appeared in only a handful of the 42 reviews I identified in scientific journals. Most of them addressed the Yearbook on a different plane.

The most frequent qualification for the Yearbook was that of 'reference' -a tag that the earlier Annuaire had hardly received. Some reviewers undergirded the Yearbook with flowery metaphors, the most frequent being that of an international maze/labyrinth that the Yearbook helped modern Theseus to navigate. Most of them were more concise and insisted that the book was 'useful', 'comprehensive ', 'vollständigste', 'impressive', 'précieux', 'wertvoll', 'reliable', 'authoritative': 'the standard guide' for all those who needed to identify, characterize or locate an international organization or the international organizations in a given domain.

When the reviewer for World Affairs mentioned that the 1962-1963 edition had 'the density and compactness of a good telephone directory', he might not have written tongue-in-cheek. 88 Its growing status as a reference volume from the mid-1950s was enhanced by its presence in the 'research tips' or 'selected bibliographies' sections published by journals in international law or politics, and later by citations in scientific articles.

The Yearbook thus became the place where lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, geographers, historians and other scholars found the certified information about international organizations. By contrast, the earlier Annuaire had had no such status -both because of its limited circulation and because the discipline of international relations was only just emerging in the 1920s and 1930s. [START_REF]The Structure of Private International Organizations[END_REF] Footnotes that cited the Yearbook as their source of factual information became frequent after 1960. How many international organizations currently exist? How many INGOs deal with anthropology? Which countries are members of the European Broadcasting Union? How far do inter-governmental organizations include African countries? How many multinational companies have a subsidiary in Sri Lanka? Which INGOs hold consultative status with UN agencies? How large is the budget of a specific association? Do memberships of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China in international organizations overlap or exclude one another? Until today, researchers from many disciplines have relied on the Yearbook for answers to such questions, using it as a proxy for actual statutes of specific international organizations, a source of precise information on organizations and a spring of accurate numbers. The Yearbook has been treated as an authoritative voice in such matters. For instance, when a lecturer in law at the University of Salzburg found a contradiction between Russian sources and the Yearbook as to the membership of the Chamber of Commerce of the Uzbek Socialist Republic within the Afro-Asian Organization for Economic Co-operation, he ultimately relied on the Yearbook. [START_REF] Uibopuu | International Legal Personality of Union Republics of U.S.S.R[END_REF] Reliance on the Yearbook became stronger when researchers tried to assess the changing number of international organizations, beginning in the late 1960s. A 1968 article by political scientist Edward Miles may have been the first to compare different editions of the Yearbook to this end. [START_REF] Miles | Organizations and Integration in International Systems[END_REF] In the process, he referred to the Yearbook as the 'official count' of international organizations. Subsequent scholars also adorned the Yearbook and its predecessors with official or semi-official status, and cited its ties with the United Nations and the League of Nations as a certificate of its accuracy. [START_REF] Boli | World Culture in the World Polity: A Century of International Non-Governmental Organization[END_REF] They referred to the 'United Nations The treatment of the Yearbook as an authoritative source was not limited to numbers and information: it extended to the definitions and categories that shaped these numbers. As any directory, the editorial team had to decide which organizations to include or omit. The decision had to be ad hoc, because there existed no official definition. For a long time, UN texts themselves did not go further than saying that an INGO was an organization not established by inter-governmental agreements. 95 The Yearbook's content was thus defined by specific criteria, established in accordance with UN staff -likely in the mid-1950s. These criteria were only made explicit in the 1968-1969 edition: seven major characteristics decided whether non-governmental organizations were 'genuinely international' and could be included in the Yearbook. [START_REF]What kind of organizations are included[END_REF] Until the 1976 edition, this, for instance, altogether excluded organizations whose activities, budget and membership did not cover at least three countries. After 1976, such organizations could be included in the Yearbook but under different and shifting categories separated from 'genuinely international' organizations: the tag from the early 1980s was 'internationally oriented national organizations', whose number was comparable to the number of 'genuinely international' organizations, and in the 1990s new classes were created to accommodate emergent and 'non-conventional' types of organizations (networks and virtual groups, religious orders, governmental and non-governmental bodies connected to intergovernmental organizations). [START_REF]The table 'Phases and emphases of international organization data series[END_REF] In almost every article I have found where Yearbook data has been used, authors have conflated the number of existing INGOs with the content of the Yearbook, and even more narrowly with the Yearbook's category of 'genuinely international bodies'. This suggests how the categorization of the Yearbook's, and its content, have been framing the perimeter of most studies. [START_REF] Boli | World Culture', 174, whose section about the Yearbook and INGOs data[END_REF] Only a handful of the identified 172 articles which have used figures or lists from the Yearbook include any acknowledgment of the 'seven aspects' used for inclusion and exclusion as 'genuine international bodies' and the consequences of such criteria for the research parameters, questions and conclusions. While it seems likely that most scholars were aware of the Yearbook's limitations, they did not articulate their concerns: their choice to work with what they had seems to have muted their critical appraisal of their main source.

Just two articles about INGOs mention complementary research to establish lists of organizations in a given field. [START_REF] Smith | Globalizing Human Rights: The Work of Transnational Human Rights NGOs in the 1990s[END_REF] One of these explains that the list of human rights organizations compiled from the Yearbook yielded 225 'genuinely international' INGOs, before conversations with activists, the use of additional printed sources as well as the inclusion of relevant 'internationally oriented national organizations' mentioned in the Yearbook raised the number to a total of 325 organizations to which the research questionnaire was eventually sent.

Yet, even these two articles did not question the Yearbook's definitions and categories. Only two other scholarly articles seem to have done so. 100 Most significantly, sociologist Evelyn Bush insisted that the Yearbook's definitions hindered a satisfactory identification of religious groups active in the domain of human rights for two main reasons. Firstly, the Yearbook's association with the institutional needs of the UN, as well as the criteria ruling inclusion in the Yearbook and its 'genuinely international organizations' category, tended to sideline smaller, informal INGOs with a financial or membership gravity centre in one or two countries whereas it over-represented organizations that enacted the organizational and normative principles shared by the United Nations and the UIA. Secondly, the Yearbook's classification assumed that religion and secular contributions to civil society and international life were different by nature, with compassion and rationality being respectively the chief motivation for action.

Through a comparison between the data from the Yearbook and the online Human Rights Directory (www.hri.ca), Bush concluded 'that research using the Yearbook (…) is indeed biased toward the more powerful organizations in the human rights field ', and that the Yearbook 'religious organizations' category did not adequately capture the growth of religion motivated organizations engaging public issues such as human rights. 101 Her points ring true when bearing in mind the publication's wider history and context: the UIA's commitment to support organized internationalism through its publication and the arrangement with the UN that shaped the criteria for inclusion.

The next question, then, is to evaluate how heavily research on international organizations has relied on the Yearbook. Indeed, researchers did not only use the Yearbook as a source for lists, facts and figures. International relations specialists and sociologists have also given it prominence as a source of data for their quantitative approaches. 102 Those with a knack for more sophisticated quantitative analysis used Yearbook data to create dependent, independent or control variables about INGOs as they implemented regressive analysis or event history analysis to understand the development of international organization at large, or international organizations' development in one domain after the other. 119 The references in all these articles make it clear that the data extracted and coded from the Yearbook -alongside the indicators or variables it helped to build -was exchanged among individuals and generations of researchers. 120 The Yearbook and its data became part of a toolkit that circulated between collaborators, among colleagues and from masters to disciples, helping to Yearbook provided sufficient grounds for caution. More generally, they could not abide by the unspecified and inconsistent criteria for inclusion and the limited verification of information:

[I]t was clear that different rules had been used from year to year or even from page to page. In general, it seemed that the editors had largely permitted the organizations to categorize themselves as well as to define their own founding date, membership, and so forth (…)Such a procedure, of course, is not conducive to uniformity and comparability. Fried's first Annuaires to the current edition of the Yearbook, information has come from the organizations themselves by way of questionnaires. Both the origins of the Annuaires in the survey technique and the limited resources of the UIA conspired to leave it to international organizations to provide information. These questionnaires have never been included in the

Yearbooks, but some can be found in archives. 127 The articles that I have consulted do not confront the questions that arise from this situation. How many INGOs have been able to commit enough staff's energy, competence and time to complete the UIA's questionnaires sent by the Union? What has been the response rate for these surveys, especially when the updating of an existing entry was required? To what extent have organizations provided up-to-date and accurate facts or figures about such sensitive matters as membership distribution by country, budget amount or connections to other international organizations, considering the likely consequences for both their inclusion in the Yearbook and their public image? What has been the capacity of the Yearbook editorial team to fact-check this information or to complete questionnaire items that were not filled by the organizations? How far were UIA staff members able to chase organizations that had not yet been included in the Yearbook or to follow up with organizations that did not return questionnaires? These questions are important to appraise the coverage, accuracy and consistency of the Yearbook's content -and, consequently, of the data researchers derived from it. They are not part of the critical apparatus of the articles in my sample, though.

Answers to these questions are scarce. Some clues, however, are offered by the 1968 'Judge report' and by the appendixes published since the Yearbook's 1983-1984. From the former, we learn that 'the quality cannot be controlled because the UIA only includes what it gets and does not make, or cannot make, extensive efforts to improve the quality of individual entries'. 128 Judge blamed this incapacity to upgrade data quality to the lack of mechanisms for searching missing or additional information; the poor quality of existing files at UIA; the dearth of staff and time to gather information from external sources; the belatedness of questionnaire campaigns; and the costs involved in modifying existing text between different editions. 129 The UIA's shoe-string operation was taking its toll. Judge's conclusion was stern: data for many organizations was insufficient, the accuracy of information was diminishing and chances to reverse this development were complicated by the Yearbook's principle to only include information approved by the organization concerned.

This remained a constant challenge, as confirmed by appendixes present since the 1983-1984 edition, chiefly the 'Editorial Problems and Policies' section. It acknowledged the under-reporting of INGOs that did not fit with the 'genuinely international' category and the fact that some organizations did not want to provide information on their budget or other items they deemed confidential. Some appendixes claimed that editors made their best to corroborate inflated statements and claims, but the method for collecting and publishing information remained unchanged: 'the guiding principle has been to portray the organization as its sees itself usually from its own documents (…). The editors cannot verify the claims made in documents received.' 130 Although the wording and location changed slightly between editions, these caveats have been repeated over time between 1981 and 2015. The Yearbook's 'Warning' section, published since the 1986-1987 volume, notes that '[the] final evaluation of the information presented here must be left to the users of this volume'. 131 As with insurance contracts clauses written in small fonts, we may not have paid enough attention to this warning.

Conclusion

Having considered the chain that has been presented here -from production to consumption of the Yearbook and other directories of international organizations -I argue that their value has been overstated. Overstated by the UIA itself, and its publishers, who have staged a narrative of continuity, objectivity and consistency that leaves no place for the more tumultuous history of discontinuity, activism, institutionalization and difficulties that have marked the history of the Annuaire, Handbook and Yearbook. Overstated by us scholars, who have largely accepted and used the Yearbook as an official or semi-official source of comprehensive, accurate and fine-tuned fact and data pool. This stance has been at its strongest for data concerning INGOs that political scientists and sociologists have been using in the last twenty years or so, especially through quantitative approaches to civil society. as UIA relies on self-reporting'. 136 They follow these remarks with a panorama of the attempts by NGO scholars to build their own ad hoc databases, using but not being bound by Yearbook material, and tailored to their research questions. It remains to be seen whether the insights of scholars like Bush or Bloodgood will blossom into a thorough critical examination, or if the Yearbook, in the absence of other easily accessible cross sector options for INGOs data, is too unique to be failed.

Notes

Several people have been very generous in helping me write this chapter: grand merci to Christoph Verbruggen, Stéphanie Manfroid, Daiana Torres, Gregory Meyer, Michele Hiltzik, Elisabeth Bloodgood, Davide Rodogno and Daniel Laqua.

Figure 9 . 1

 91 Figure 9.1 Extract from the League of Nations' Handbook of International Organizations.Source: Répertoire des organisations internationales (associations, bureaux, commissions, etc.) (Geneva: Société des Nations, 1936), 197.

2 :

 2 the material would initially be collected by the Union through questionnaires, and sent to the Non-Governmental Organizations section of the United Nations Secretariat for revision and additions. When published, in August 1951, the 1951-1952 edition amounted to 1,224 pages and included 345 additional international organizations and was much better documented.

Figure 9 . 2

 92 Figure 9.2 Advertisement for the Yearbook of International Organizations in the UIA's NGO Bulletin (1951).

  , a World Guide to Religious and Spiritual Organizations, a Who's Who in International Organizations from 2007 (later included in the Yearbook set) and more remotely the Yearbook of World Problems and Human Potential. 49 Although the imprint of K.G Saur Verlag was bought in 1987 by Reed International, sold to the Gale Group by the now Reed-Elsevier firm in 2000 and again to De Gruyter in 2006, the contract with the Union was maintained. The title changed hands again in 2011: since then, it has been published by Brill-Nijhoff, without any salient change to the presentation and organization of the work. The

  Public libraries catalogues provide other yardsticks through comparison with other volumes belonging to the internationalist sphere. One is the second edition of the Handbuch der Friedensbewegung (1911-1913). Written by one of the Annuaire's authors, Alfred Fried, this specialized directory of the pacifist movement can be retraced to 126 libraries covered by Worldcat. Nicholas Murray Butler's The International Mind, published in English in 1912, is now on the shelves of some 400 Worldcat libraries around the world and Frédéric Passy's Pour la paix (1909) in 102. L'Internationalisme scientifique, a survey of scientific international organizations written by Otlet and La Fontaine's Dutch rival Pieter Eijkman, also published in French in 1911, is present in 69 of these libraries. Conversely, there are only some 40 hits for the Annuaire du mouvement pacifiste for the years 1910 to 1913, a yearbook published in Bern by the International Peace Bureau where La Fontaine was a major character. Such comparisons suggest that the Annuaire may not have found its way onto libraries shelves as often as pacifist bestsellers in English, but reached a robust presence when compared to other directories of international life or to pacifist essays in French. It also compares well with the Handbook published by the League of Nations during the 1920s and 1930s, with respectively 62 Worldcat hits for the English 1921 edition and 24 for the French one.

Figure 9 . 3

 93 Figure 9.3 Advertisements in the UIA's Yearbook of International Organizations (1948). Source: Annuaire des organisations internationales/ Yearbook of International Organizations (Geneva : Société de l'Annuaire des Organisations Internationales, 1948), 279.

Figure 9 . 4 :

 94 Figure 9.4: advertisements for the Yearbook of International Organizations in the IR journal International Organization. Source: International Organization 12, no. 2 (1958) and 16, no. 4 (1962).

  Appraising the results of this commercial drive is deceptive. Locating the Yearbook in Worldcat is a quagmire: the publication has been catalogued in too many different fashions, serial or isolated holding of the title cannot be distinguished, and the development of the online subscription puts the cherry on the headache. All in all, no accurate figures can be established, but one edition or the other can be found in hundreds of libraries across the world, suggesting that it has effectively reached out to the 'sociologist and researcher'. Diplomats also seem to have had access to the Yearbook: the 1949 and 1951-1952 Yearbook copies I consulted came by inter-library loan from the Department of External Affairs of Canada, while the 1950 edition in the library of Université Laval I used was a gift from the French General Consulate of Quebec.

When I opened the

  box and took out the book I felt as if I had suddenly come into the possession of King Solomon's magic carpet, which enabled me to fly far into the future (…). When you read its pages you seem to be witnessing the erection of a new world. (…) An enormous multitude of forces are creating a new body in the shape of a highly complex international organization, and they are informing it with a new soul -the Conscience of Humanity. This is the greatest of all the miracles of our time,-the almost automatic evolution of one harmonious World State out of the multitudinous jarring congeries of national states which constitute the armed anarchy of this planet .

  and the Yearbook of International Organizations' section, which has invariably been included in every edition of the Yearbook from the 1951-1952 to the 2011-2012 edition.93 This section astutely quoted a League document of 1921 and the aforementioned 1950 ECOSOC resolution to suggest official collaboration. It thus provided the Yearbook with a varnish of officialdom, even though it was only in 2007 that the Union signed an official agreement with an intergovernmental organization regarding the identification of INGOs.94

  create a research milieu. The reliance on Yearbook data extended beyond North America: when the London School of Economics team began to publish its Global Civil Society Yearbook in 2001, its researchers calculated a 'membership density index' for each country, based on the membership information of the Yearbook INGOs entries. More generally, their claim that INGOs were the embodiment of global civil society relied heavily on the Yearbook and its content -thus reproducing the justification loop installed by Fried and friends. 121 How much has this reliance and presence led scholars to ponder the representativeness, consistency and accuracy of the data collected by the UIA and featured in the Yearbook? Here, a distinction needs to be made between researchers who used data about IGOs and data about INGOs. Canadian political scientist Michael Wallace and his US colleague David J. Singer, who assembled data about inter-governmental organizations between 1815 and 1964, were openly critical about the information provided by the Annuaire, the Handbook and the Yearbook. Vagueness of information, inaccuracies in the Annuaire, chronological publication gaps for the Handbook, as well as incomplete information and inconsistency of rules for the

  More recently, the Yearbook has presented, for the first time, an evaluation of its data collection process: the 2014-2015 edition includes a (discreet) mention that the annual questionnaire to INGOs has had a response rate of 35 to 40 per cent: as such, it hardly amounts to an annual comprehensive census.132

  What's next? Evelyn Bush's remarks about the biases embedded within the Yearbook do not seem to have been fully taken aboard yet. As of February 2018, her 2007 article has only been cited 3 times in the journals available on JSTOR, 4 times according to Web of Science, and only one of the 47 citations mentioned in Google Scholar acknowledges or follows up on her analysis of the Yearbook's data.133 This is the case although, as early as 2007, John Boli and David Brevington pointed readers to Bush's piece in order to assess 'general problems and limitations that are bound to afflict any data source of this nature'.134 Interestingly, Boli and Brevington's piece included an unprecedented critical appraisal of Yearbook's data: UIA's 'seven rules' used for inclusion were explicitly mentioned, as well as the availability rate rate of the information used in the chapter (membership numbers, for instance, were only available for 51.3 per cent of the organizations studied).135 It was, to my knowledge, the first time that qualifications of the Yearbook's INGOs data were made public. Other clues suggest that INGOs researchers are developing a more critical take on the Yearbook. Elizabeth Bloodgood and Hans Peter Schmitz have underlined that this most common source for quantitative data on INGOs has been problematic for 'the definition of INGOs which affects the conceptual assumptions shaping the dataset and the number of INGOs reported' and that 'a large part of the more detailed information is plagued by missing values,

Table 9 .1: Sales Data on the Yearbook of International Organizations, 1952-1967

 9 Anthony Judge, ' Report of a Preliminary Investigation of the Possibility of Using Computer Data Processing Methods ', Appendix I, exhibit 21a. Available online: http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/uia/docs/thesis/appen/apprep_all.pdf (accessed 30 April 2018).

	Yearbook edition	Print run	Number sold	Price in Belgian francs
	1952-1953	3000	3000	350
	1954-1955	3000	3000	500
	1956-1957	2750	2750	500
	1958-1959	3500	3500	580
	1960-1961	3250	3150	700
	1962-1963	4500	4100	700
	1964-1965	4500	4150	800
	1966-1967	5500	4800 (ongoing)

Source:

  Within the sample of scholarly articles used for this chapter, and notwithstanding the sample bias, this peaked at two moments in time and in connection with specific disciplinary communities on the US social sciences scene. Firstly, between 1968 and 1980, it was chiefly American scholars of international relations who developed quantitative approaches based on Yearbook's data as they tried to figure out the path to world order through international organization. Other disciplines chipped in, the very first article of that cluster being signed by a development sociologist.103 INGOs were part of the picture, 104 but specialists working on intergovernmental organizations clearly led this first phase. Twelve out of nineteen articles using Yearbook data dealt exclusively with inter-governmental organizations.105 A second cluster appeared in the late 1990s, focusing on the place and role of international associations in globalization. Two strands of social scientists -whose work still dominates the field today -contributed to that spike. The first strand comprised specialists of transnational social movements such as Jackie Smith and Kathryn Sikkink.106 The second group featured researchers who endorsed the global neo-institutionalist approach of US sociologist John Meyer and strived to establish the dynamics and genealogy of 'world society': they mined the Yearbook for data on INGOs, seam after seam, following its initial exploitation by John Boli and George Thomas. Within this large set of articles, the Yearbook is treated, in Jackie Smith's words, as 'the most comprehensive, annual census of international associations'.107 In both clusters, Yearbook data fuelled different types of quantitative tools. Some were modest but widely adopted: counts of environmental INGOs per country to estimate pressure for environmental compliance in different countries;108 creation rates of INGOs to trace the growing or diminishing strength of 'world discourse' within a specific subject domain; 109 country membership in IGOs and INGOs to assess the political autonomy of post-colonial states; 110 country participation in INGOs to index support and incentives to 'world order' and international cooperation by different nations; 111 and the logging of national memberships in INGOs to estimate 'linkage to world society'. 112 Together with the latter, 'shared membership score' -which measure a country's membership in IGOs or INGOs as recorded in Yearbook entries -have frequently been used ever since Robert C. Angell's introduction of the score in the late 1960s.113 A whole metrology was thus derived from the Yearbook and its data, some of it being described as 'standard measure'.114 Yearbook data also fed into analytical statistics: scholars counted keywords in INGO names and descriptions, 115 analysed membership figures, 116 drew from the 'NGO relations' section of the Yearbook to estimate the density of international civil society, 117 or mapped the geographical repartition of secretariats offices.118

  122 For these reasons, Wallace and Singer's 'Correlates of War' project incorporated additional data from many other sources. Yearbook data was again verified and complemented with other sources when this dataset was expanded in the early 2000s.123 Despite the fact that, until the 2000s, scholars relied on Yearbook data to study shared membership in IGOs after 1964, 124 quantitative indicators about IGOs have usually been built from the expanded and corrected data of the 'Correlates of War' project.The situation is quite different in the literature on INGOs, where Yearbook data reigns supreme. John Boli and George Thomas's forged the crown with their original statement that the Yearbook data was 'adequate for meaningful analysis' because of semi-official status of the Yearbook, continuous contact with 13,000 organizations, and annual revision and addition of information by UIA staff.125 The very same year, Jackie Smith also endorsed Yearbook data, insisting on the use of various sources by the Yearbook staff in order to identify and characterize INGOs.126 Such endorsements invite us to return to the Union's collection method. From