GATT Electronic archive

GATT documents at the WTO

The WTO Secretariat is currently developing a comprehensive electronic database of GATT documents. This project comprises a number of stages:

The majority of GATT documents available in English in the WTO Secretariat have been digitized; some 40,000 items remain to be scanned (2007-2008). A basic set of metadata for these documents has been compiled and is currently being revised by the Secretariat (2005- ). The French and Spanish versions of GATT documents available in the WTO Secretariat still require to be digitized and catalogued (2007-2008). Eventually all language versions of the documents, together with their metadata, will be posted in a new web database of GATT documents.

Pending the implementation of this comprehensive database, the Secretariat has posted the digitized documents currently available on the WTO website where they may be consulted online.

GATT documents at the WTO

GATT digital library

GATT digital library

Stanford University Library (SUL) has been working in conjunction with the WTO on the GATT digitization project and was responsible for the scanning of the original set of English documents and also for preparing the initial metadata.

SUL has made these documents available through its website which is equipped with a search engine.

Note: this collection is incomplete and lacks a large number of documents - principally those that still remain to be scanned (see above). It also contains a very small number of French and Spanish documents that were stored with their English counterparts on the microfiche used in the digitization exercise.