Digitalization of the Council of Europe Documents

Eva Sodomova,
Council of Europe


Information Policy, Access to Documents

There are ongoing activities within the various bodies of the Council of Europe that aim to the creation of corporate Information Policy defining the clear and concise statement of policy and the objectives. Such a "union" tool would co-ordinate the policies brought into practice in its particular areas. There is a special Reporters Group on Information Policy at the Committee of Ministers, which basically works in three main areas for preparation of the policies:
- The creation of information and their publishing,
- The management of documentary information,
- The communication to the user.

INFODOC stands for Documentary Information Section. As part of the SEDDOC - Publishing and Documentation Service, it plays an important role in all the phases of information life cycle.

Its purpose is:
1. provide institutional users of the Council of Europe with the best possible access to the internal and external documentary information they need to perform their professional duties.
2. increase the general public's awareness of the Council of Europe's mission and activities by providing quick and user-friendly access to the documentary information produced by the Council.

SEDDOC - the Publishing and Documentation Service of the Council prints 200 million pages produced by the bodies of Council in domains covering nearly all subject areas of human activities.

To achieve the above mentioned goals the Section, that currently has general information service (I-Point), Central Library, Indexing unit and two specialised centres, is planning reorganisation.

The plans are based on a proposal for the organisation of the Council of Europe activities in the area of library and documentary information services. They take into account the mission of the Council of Europe to spread world-wide the results of its work and the potential of the new technology installed by SEDDOC with the support of DCT as a part of the PRIDE project.

It is proposed that services be organised as a network of collaborating units or centres belonging to various directorates/services but drawing upon a common technical support infrastructure. Supplying the common technical support infrastructure would be the responsibility of INFODOC.

External information

Through the Central and Vedovato libraries, we provide access to a general reference collection covering the subjects that are general to the organisation, and special focus in areas not covered by specialised centres of the Council.
Specialised collections of various intergovernmental institutions such as UN, OECD, EP etc. are available for the institutional users.
The access to these information is realised by:
- purchasing books and periodicals for the library collection and subsequent on-site use or loans
- inter-library loans
- exchanging documents and publications with related organisations and receiving donations
- establishing access to electronic resources on the Internet

It is important to note that with the exception of publications by and about the Council, we do not attempt to build collections that cover exhaustively the many subjects of the Council. Where it is possible we try to replace the paper collections by an electronic service.

Internally produced information

Increase of the general public's awareness of the Council of Europe's mission and activities should be done by providing quick and user-friendly access to the documentary information produced by the Council. It is realised by:
- General Information Service
- Access to the collection of Council of Europe documents in library and archives
- Network of partners (Information and Documentation Centres in Eastern and Central Europe and the network of Depository libraries in western Europe, Infosites)
- Co-operation with other international institutions

The Council of Europe documents collection

consists of three types of information resources produced in house:
- Working documents
- Statutory and Institutional Documents
- Sales Publications

Currently they are collected by INFODOC and entered into a bibliographic database called CERES who originally has been set-up as a library catalogue.
One of the main tasks standing in front of us is to build up a complete digital library of the documents with advanced retrieval and prints on demand facilities. Apart from fully integrated library management system it will be the reference database of the COE documents linked to fulltexts.
This database is an important element of PRIDE system, which I would like to present in more details.
For number of years the Council of Europe has been working with some major multinational firms to set up a global information system which would give to the user freedom of decision on creation, printing and distribution of the own information.

PRIDE

stands for Production and Retrieval of Information and Documents through Electronics It has three main parts
  1. Production of documents on demand and just in time

    - Which allows document printing on request without paper originals i.e. thanks to networking facilities of new technologies the authors can send the request for printing the documents which they have produced on their PC directly to central printers. The location of the author is not important. He/she may be in whichever corner of Europe provided the technology is available on site.
    - Provides author support services i.e. the users are receiving training for using the system but also help with layout of documents.
    - Economic and secure means of storage that eliminates the extensive documents stocks. The texts received in electronic format are stored in an electronic depository, which is than re-used for retrieval in the database for printing and distribution purposes.

    PRIDE will be fully operational in 1999, at present it is possible to print nearly 80% of documents received by the PRIDE immediately, compared with 20% in the past.

  2. Digital library and archive services

    - Will help to find the reference to a document by user worldwide. Because the database will use Internet, a user connected to it will have the opportunity to find the reference to a document relevant to his/her needs anywhere in the world. The database will be partly automatic for fast retrieval of information but certainly there will always be the human intervention in indexing and quality control that has to be carried out by specialised staff.
    - The access to the fulltext of a document will be dependent on the security classification of a document and a special password will be needed.
    - The services will facilitate the search by bibliographic reference or in full-text.
    - Searching will be possible via the Council of Europe web sites.
    - It will allow printing at central as well as local printers.
    - Alerting services will be provided.
    - Union collection handling will be an important spin-off especially in relation to our CID network. The CIDs are investing lot of effort into translation of the most important documents of the COE into the local languages. The system will enable to trace various language versions of a document.

  3. Advanced distribution services

    - Will provide electronic management of mailing lists. It will assure that everyone will get its information in time and all updates if necessary.
    - Mailing in digital or paper format according a request
    - Increased speed and cost reduction of worldwide distribution. If you compare the costs of distribution of a paper and electronic document, the advantage here is apparent. You can not only count with reduced cost for mail, but other things like delay of post office service, special procedures in customs and handling of heavy parcel can be avoided.

The three main layers cover several subprojects such as:

Gazette

A plan to start a publication of a multimedia "La Gazette du Conseil de l'Europe" that would play a role of the official journal. Multimedia means that it will be available on WEB, on CD or in paper - depending on request.
It will include texts adopted by the Committee of Ministers, Parliamentary Assembly, Congress of Local and Regional authorities and the European Court of the Human rights.

Digitizing of the historical collections

There are various reasons for scanning of historical collections. Some may be political such as easier and faster access to documents for public, increasing the transparency of the Council of Europe, networking, etc.

Others are more practical such as increasing efficiency, for economy, enabling exchange of documents with other institutions but one of the main reasons is to allow access to the full complexity of the COE documents, etc.

The PRIDE system will provide access for new, current documents but parallel, we are working on projects of scanning the most important documents from the historical collection so that they are accessible in electronic format as well. The databases are co-ordinated in such a way that for end user they will appear as one database. The user will search all resources in one go and it will not be necessary go to various sites. The searching will be done via an interface eliminating a multistep approach.

Historical Archives Current situation

The archive has three main series of documents since 1949, reflecting the activities of the Council governing bodies. There is also series of major policy files deposited by the Private Office of the Secretary General and files deposited gradually by operational Directorates.

Down to 1979 the archives were organised by subject, being classified in 2850 different topics. Since then they are organised in accordance with the law of provenance. The historical archives occupy 3000 linear meters of shelving. Apart from the central archives we have several collections of paper documents in various directorates of the Council and in the library. Access to these documents is divers depending on location of documents; it may be restricted to internal use within directorates or public in the library and archive. The document management is neither standardised nor co-ordinated. The collections are not complementary and some of them are more, some less complete. That means that the storage has high space requirements and multiple copies are stored on various places and handled by several people parallel. The access via electronic media is possible only to a selection of most recent documents (back to 1992 maximum) on various WEB sites of the Council and users have to search each site separately. The Parliamentary Assembly documents will be used as a pilot project for scanning of the whole historical collection.

First pilot of the digitisation will be done on the documents produced by the Parliamentary Assembly Documents
Volume of Documents (one document may have from 1-400 pages)
Subtotal since 1949-1990 approx. 60000 documents (10.800.000 Pages)
Subtotal since 1990 approx. 14980 documents (2.717.118 Pages)
Total Approx. 74980 document (13.517.118 Pages)

Types of Documents Produced by the Parliamentary Assembly
- Documents of Parliamentary sessions
   - Minutes
   - Reports
   - Document (Working papers)
   - Temporary documents (bulletins, list of participants, agenda of a day, etc)
- Adopted Texts
   - Recommendations
   - Resolutions
   - Opinions
- Committee Documents
- Various
   - Conclusions of Conferences, round tables
   - Yearbooks
   - Biographies

The digital archive will provide

- Secure storage, maintenance and retrieval of documents reflecting the functional requirements for evidence in record keeping
- Fast and user friendly access to documents for external and internal users
- Facility to search in bibliographic data and/or full texts of the electronic documents via web based user interface
- Facility to link the electronic archive to other applications e.g. CD ROM/WEB publishing systems, the database of the Council of Europe documents (PRIDE) etc.
- Facility of exchanging data with other institutions/applications
- Facility of upgrading in case the programmes used in system become obsolete

Where to find what on www.coe.fr

 You may know that many documents are already available on the numerous web sites of the Council. But the basic difference is that there is always only a selected number of documents, not all of them in final versions and you have to visit several sites to reach the needed information. So the value added by PRIDE will be also the comprehensiveness and proper categorisation and classification that affects the quality of retrieval process.

Services Directory
Index (http://www.coe.fr/sitemap.htm)

Presentation of the Council of Europe (http://www.coe.fr/eng/present/index.htm)
Activities (http://www.coe.fr/eng/act-e/index.htm)
Legal Texts (http://www.coe.fr/eng/legaltxt/treaties.htm)
News (http://www.coe.fr/eng/actualite/index.htm)

Committee of Ministers
Adopted texts, Decisions, Reports At http://www.coe.fr/cm/indexes/doc.0.html

Parliamentary Assembly
Reports, Adopted texts, Press Releases at http://stars.coe.fr/default_e.htm

Human Rights Information
European Court of Human Rights at http://www.dhcour.coe.fr/
European Commission of Human Rights at http://www.dhdirhr.coe.fr/
European Committee for Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, at http://www.cpt.coe.fr/cpt/en/public.htm
European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance at http://www.ecri.coe.fr/
The Congress of Local and Regional Authorities: Reports, Adopted texts, Press releases at http://www.coe.fr/cplre/

Press Releases:
http://www.coe.fr/eng/actualite/index.htm
http://www.coe.fr/fr/actualite/index.htm