This site makes you feel most welcome from the very beginning. The simple graphic which is the introductory screen allows visitors to select one of the 11 languages in which this site is available, including English. This simple choice gives users an idea of the complexity of managing such a site and the labour which must be involved in maintaining the various pages. Once the language of choice has been selected, visitors are offered a page with four distinct areas to select: News, ABCs, Institutions and Policies. These areas reflect the purpose of this site, which is “to enhance public access to information about its initiatives and European Union policies in general”. The site does not intend to be totally comprehensive about each and every body associated with the European Union (EU) but to provide the basic information and links to more specific bodies as appropriate.
The News section offers press releases of the various EU institutions as well as a calendar of upcoming events. TV news, photos, statistics, Euro (currency) exchange rates, and key issues are also offered from this page. News items were being added daily when the site was being reviewed. Some archival data are also available from the photos and statistics pages. Most of these pages were easy to manoeuvre through, but a few did not allow users to link back to the News page.
The Institutions link has a general overview of the bodies associated with the European Union as well as direct links to the various home pages of these institutions. Included in this list are the European Parliament, Council, Commission, Court of Justice and various other agencies and bodies. If users are searching for an institution, then this is the most direct link to the specific site.
The ABC section provides basic information on the EU, access to official documents, publications and other sources of information concerning the EU. The first page concisely describes the EU’s history, objectives and the various related institutions. European governments, citizens’ rights, symbols (i.e. flags) and European treaties are treated as separate links to information. Some of the linking pages provide full‐text documents in HTML or PDF formats, especially via the treaties page. All of these pages are useful for the novice visitor needing general information about the larger body of the EU. For the government publications or collection development librarians, access to EUR‐OP, the publishing body of the EU, is through this page.
Lastly, the Policies area provides subject access to legal information, legislative activity, implementation of EU policies, grants and loans, statistics, and related publications. Subject access is by broad subject classification such as Agriculture, Development Policy or Environment.
Along with these four major categories, this site also provides access to several tools: Key Issues, Mailbox, What’s New (on Europa), Search and Information. Key Issues and What’s New both serve as information pages. Key Issues addresses exactly that: key issues of concern for the entire EU. Such topics as enlarging the EU and the World Trade Organization are discussed at length. What’s New on Europa is a press release service specifically geared to the EU as a whole. This differs from the main News section which looks at specific institutions’ news releases. This can be a bit confusing for the first time user as to what is actually new! A link to the What’s New on Europa page would greatly enhance the main News section.
The Mailbox section gives visitors a large selection of e‐mail contacts for the various EU institutions. The list goes from a general link to the entire EU to the specific bodies linked to the EU. This should provide users with almost all possible links to contact the correct institution.
The search facility provided at this site is quite well developed, considering what most other Web sites of this caliber provide. A basic query box is provided. As well, limiting features by number of documents to display and date last updated are options. A choice of just HTML or all types of documents (ie. HTML, PDF, Word, etc.) is also available. This combination of search strategies allows for fairly accurate search results. There are even two levels of help from the search page:
- 1.
1first aid (five basic search options); and
- 2.
2extended help (full search capabilities).
Both Boolean logic and truncation are available for searching. The use of the comma (,) for “or” may be a bit confusing to some users but most of the other search features are standard. In Extended help, there is a full warning about the limitations of the search engine used and how results may not be what you were expecting especially in a multilingual database. On the main search screen, there is another warning that some important databases on European affairs are not retrievable through the search engine even though the information is found on the Europa site. With the help and warnings provided, a visitor should easily be able to construct a valid search and retrieve relevant results. Results are retrieved in ranked relevancy order. The full title, URL and content note are provided for each document as well as the date and size of the file. Most of the documents retrieved in the searches performed tended to be PDF files.
Lastly, the Information section provides access to those bodies and documents which do not really fit elsewhere. Included in this group are links to databases such as EUR‐Lex (EU Law) and EUDOR (document delivery service). Some of the services provided on this page are available to the general visitor but a lot require passwords to gain access. Once again, this may be confusing and frustrating to some users.
Overall, I thought this site was well organized and well worth looking further into for current and background information on the European Union. The sheer amount of information that is readily available through this site to all visitors makes it a worthy site to recommend.
