Eurostat web publications free, January 2004

From 6th January 2004 Eurostat has been offering free access to all its PDF publications in addition to around 1000 free tables on its website at http://europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat. Eurostat seems to be hiding its light under a bushel on this change of policy. The only indication on the website is the suspension of the online ordering facility. No formal announcement appears to have been made apart from a small note before Christmas in the What's New section of the website of the EC Representation in the UK cleverly spotted by Laurie Salemohamed of Loughborough University's EDC. Eurostat's webmaster confirmed the development but gave no further information about whether this would in any way affect the production of the Eurostat CD-ROMs. Presumably some method of archiving older publications will still be required, but the current CD-ROM product has not managed to do that consistently or without technical issues. Perhaps this will provide an opportunity for a rethink. Meantime a considerable amount of work will need to be done to the website to remove references to free publications (still pointing only to those publications which were previously available at no charge) and to rewrite help screens and other information pages to reflect the new policy. Though the site has not yet been fully prepared for the change, it is nevertheless one which will be widely welcomed by information providers and end-users alike. It very much reflects the trend in the way many of the Member States' statistical offices provide access to data. Now users of Eurostat too will have the latest statistics at their fingertips. For those requiring customised data the Data Shop Network remains the source to contact, and full details of participating organisations are available on the Eurostat website.