Developments in European information issues: Networks and relays – Services – Products, December 2000

EUDUG November meeting

The EU Databases User Group held its Autumn meeting at the European Parliament Office in London on 23rd November 2000. Two excellent speakers gave updates on recent developments and a taste of things to come. June Lowery-Kingston, Head of Official Products for €-OP, covered TED; the introduction of the new portal to access Eur-Lex, Eudor and CELEX expected by mid-2001; changes to the CELEX database; and a brief outline of the CELEX expert search mask.

From January 2001 the applicant countries will be able to include tender opportunities in the TED database if they wish, though it is not obligatory. They will however have to be published in one of the current official languages. We can also expect to see a new look to the TED search interface designed to offer more assistance and make it easier to use.

The Eudor database currently acts as a document delivery service and now contains 2.3 million Official Journal documents and 73,000 COM documents in TIFF format, offering almost complete coverage. One exception is the special edition published on accession of new member states. It follows from that point that English texts are only available from 1973 to date. Earlier documents would have to be ordered in another language. Remember too than TIFF files are scanned images so although the Eudor search facility is free it is not possible to search the text, only the titles. It will shortly be possible to order a single page only, for example a page containing a graphic or table, which will not display in CELEX or Eur-lex after the 45 days of pdf files have been withdrawn. As well as receiving orders by fax, post or file transfer, an e-mail option has been added. However the e-mail route has encountered problems with some browsers. In view of all the positive news about Eudor, it came as a surprise to many to hear that it will probably disappear next year - but only as a distinct service. The content will be incorporated into the new web portal which will include Eur-Lex and CELEX. More details of Eur-Lex and CELEX developments will follow in a later column.

Avis Furness, Librarian of the European Parliament London Office, outlined the services of the office and highlighted especially useful parts of the European Parliament website. The Legislative Observatory in particular was singled out. She noted that the dossiers are usually updated daily but acknowledged that there had been delays recently. The good news was that major work was due to be undertaken over the last weekend in November to resolve some outstanding problems with the database. It is to be hoped that the search engine will function reliably as a result of the work.

EUDUG's next meeting is scheduled for the last week in March 2001.

Online 2000

The atmosphere on Day One of this year's Online exhibition (5-7 December at Olympia) was frenetic despite the travel problems to attend the exhibition. The European Union did not host a separate meeting but did have its usual large ground floor stand staffed by a range of representatives. There was an interesting programme of half-hour demonstrations as well as the opportunity to discuss specific issues with individual staff. The major commercial producers of EU information were also present, some of them boasting very elaborate and high-tech stands. On the whole however it was not a year for the launch of major new or significantly different products. Later columns will pick out more details of recent new sources and enhancements of existing ones.