European Documentation Centre

EUROPEAN DOCUMENTATION CENTRE (EDC)

In 1993, the Council of the University approved the Statute creating the European Documentation and Research Centre (EDRC) at the University of Malta and incorporating within it the European Documentation Centre (EDC). The EDRC is charged to provide the services of the EDC in Malta as part of a global EDC network.  Further information about the EDC network

The main objective of the EDC is to ensure that the general public as well as the University Community have access to the legislation and documentation produced by the EU. The EDC receives all the Community documentation produced by the Parliament, the Commission and other Community institutions.  These are housed in the EDC reference library which is open to the public Monday to Friday between 8.00 a.m. and 12.30p.m. and between 1.30p.m. and 5.00p.m. in winter and 8.00a.m. and 1.00p.m. in summer. Furthermore, as an EDC it has privileged access to the Community databases via internet.

Cataloguing Process
We have started cataloguing all the EDC’s documents.  This catalogue will provide a useful searching aid for all EDC’s users.  Once a good representation of the EDC’s holdings has been included in this catalogue, it will be accessible through the EDRC website.  As part of this process, books catalogued are assigned keywords to enable searches using subject as a query base.  These keywords are assigned by using the Eurovoc thesaurus.  This thesaurus is also used to group similar subject documents together on shelving.  Using a numerical notation does this.
Access Eurovoc

To help you understand this thesaurus we have included a short introduction to Eurovoc and the list of main subject headings.  Following this is the accession list of books, reports and pamphlets that were received at the EDC up till 31st December 2005.  These documents are grouped and listed using the Eurovoc subject headers.

Introduction to Eurovoc
Eurovoc is a thesaurus, which covers all the fields in which the European Union is active and provides a means of indexing the documents in centers such as the EDC.  It is currently being used by the European Parliament, the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, and national and regional parliaments in Europe, national government departments and certain European organizations.

Accession List 1: Documents received by 31st Dec 05
Accession List 2: Documents received by 31st Mar 06
Accession List 3: Documents received by 31st Aug 06
Accession List 4: Documents received by 26th Oct 06

White Paper on a European Communication Policy
The institutions of the European Union have often been criticised as suffering from a democratic deficit.  Those who favour this theory insisted that it is due to this democratic deficit that France and the Netherlands failed to ratify the Constitutional Treaty.  Thus, to counter-act this problem the European Commission has issued a number of documents for the period of reflection and beyond. From February to July there is a consultation process going on how the European citizens feel as regards the European Communication Policy.  To participate in this process and to read all the related documents click the following link: Read more