Dear colleague,
Our European Association for Information on Local Development
deals both with European affairs and a wide range of socio
economic related topics. However, our library and documentation
centre is quite specialised and its use is reserved to internal use.
The question we face is more about the selection of what
documents are to be kept and for how long: it's quite difficult to
keep the balance between the wish for resources and the place
available (either in case or on disk).
Concretely speaking, we separate EU laws and processes (IP
notes, annual reports, EP reports, ...) in a specific documentation
section. Reports, studies... - documents that will remain relevant for
a while - are integrated in the general library. In order to maintain
the coherence, we chose to use the ECLAS classification for both
sections. This thesaurus is 90% relevant to our needs and is
bilingual FR/EN, which is an asset. And we have added the
complementary descriptors we specifically need (mainly about local
development).
At the moment, the system appears too detailed for the "law"
documents section, which leads to confusion. But on the other
hand we need specific keywords to classify the documents
precisely. The discussion is ongoing on either choosing another
system or amending the existing one.
Eveline Durieux,
Librarian
AEIDL
260 Chaussée St Pierre
1040 Bruxelles
Tel: +32 2 736 49 60
Fax: +32 2 736 04 34
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Date sent:
3 Dec 1999 19:17:38 +0000
Priority:
normal
Subject:
Classification of EU documents
From:
[log in to unmask]
To:
[log in to unmask]
Send reply to:
[log in to unmask]
Dear collegues,
I am very curious to know how you classify European union
related
documents. Most particulary how (if?) you integrate EU material
in
your ordinary classification schemes.
First of all, do you physically separate documents published by
the
EU
from documents published by others? If I remember correctly
this was
the case at European Documentation Centres. Anyone using the
ECLAS
headings?
Secondly, do you regard EU documents as a separate entity?
E.g. you
have all books (or electronic documents if we are talking about
web
structures) about EU in one corner and the rest (national law,
childrens books, fiction or whatever) in the other three corners of
you library? Are there, in some classification system (Dewey
perhaps?), headings like the following
1 Physics
2 International organisations
2.1 European Union
2.1.1. European Parliament
3. Languages
In some systems you have suffixes to signal that a document is
EU
related. (B for environment generally, B-ae for environment, EU
aspect, for instance). This is all right I suppose, but what about
the
IGC, CSFP and the EP? Some EU matters are easily integrated
among
others, but some EU matters are to specific.
Do you get my point? EU material must be integrated in library
collections as naturally as possible, not as a political gesture
(well, some would no doubt argue that EU documents should
generally
be
kept out of all collections!) but as to simplify retrieval for the
user. How have you solved this problem? Is it a problem?
Personally I have found the lack of a system most unsatisfying.
Nor
do
I recall any discussions (by the EIA or in any other professional
forums) about the issue. Does a lack of discussion imply a lack
of
interest? Am I totally lost, though I - as based in the Capital of
Europe - maybe ought to know better?
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Christian Bondeson
Perm.Rep of Sweden
Brussels
Maylis Campbell
AEIDL
260, Chaussee St. Pierre
B-1040 Brussels
Tel: +32 2 736 49 60
Fax: +32 2 736 04 34
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|