Developments in European information issues: Networks and relays – Services – Products, December 1998

Ten year review

The last ten years have seen a sea change in the provision of EU information and nowhere has that been more apparent than in electronic resources. In many ways, not just to celebrate a decade of European Access, this is an appropriate moment to look back over these developments and assess the progress. With the demise of ECHO in October and changes currently under review but not yet announced in Eurobases at the time of writing, this is perhaps the end of an era. Indeed in some ways we seem almost to have come full circle and, in looking to the future, need to consider how we as information professionals try to keep track of and influence the course of change ahead.

For databases at the end of the 1980s, command languages were the order of the day and for our delectation and delight the European Communities offered not just one but several. Old EU information hands will be familiar with the names even if they have tried in more recent times to forget the commands - Mistral, CCL (Common Command Language), BASIS, etc. The exception was ECHO's menu driven interface, designed to encourage more widespread use of information technology.