From the European Institutions to the European Citizens: the information channels through the European Documentation Centres (EDCs)

Abstract

The European Documentation Centers are establishments of the European Commission in the premises of the Universities and Research Institutions of the European Union Countries. Their mission is the dissemination of the Information about the European Integration and especially: • information and documentation on every question about the European Union (EU) rights, funding, exchanges, travelling, working, etc., • invitations to local EU information/networking events, • access to official EU publications and documents (online and print) • references to other information sources, • contact details for relevant organizations, • help finding detailed information on European law, integration, policies and institutions, • training for students on EU-related fact-finding and research. Before all the EDCs are a European network, the members of which produce value added services. The EDCs personnel in most cases are staff of the host organizations or of their libraries who do their best in this Information channel in parallel with their main duties. However, a wide range of initiatives has taken under and many services have developed, such as: • Communication with users through Social Media tools, • Cooperation between EDCs in the creation of repositories with European Documentation, • Use of the new technologies in the Information process, • Cooperation among them and between them and the EU Institutions to the organization of events, • Support of an email list of the whole EDCs members, and dissemination of information and documentation, asked by a member, • Publish Information leaflets and guides, • Organize training courses to their users and librarians. The role of EDCs is clearly expanding beyond their “official” duties, based on their personnel interest to the European Documentation and aiming to their users’ support. As things have changed passing the years, the European Documentation also changes ways of sharing and methods of collecting and preserving it. European Commission publishes every year an “[Internal] Annual activity report” about the activities of the EDCs collectively. European Commission has also published some reports on the recent actions and initiatives and communication channels of the EDCs. The presentation will additionally exploit the results of a questionnaire be issued to the emailing list about their current activities and their consideration on the EDCs transformation in future.