General information
EUROVOC - INFORMATION RETRIEVAL LANGUAGE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
The Eurovoc thesaurus is a multilingual, polythematic thesaurus focusing on the law and legislation of the European Union (EU). Eurovoc has been developed as a result of cooperation between the European Parliament, the EC Committee and the Publication Office with support from DG XIII. The Eurovoc Maintenance Team based in the Publication Office is responsible for the Eurovoc management and distribution. The actual 4.2 version of Eurovoc was completed in June 2005 and it is accessible for browsing and searching in 17 official languages on the Eurovoc page.
EUROVOC - INFORMATION RETRIEVAL LANGUAGE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
Eurovoc may be used especially in libraries and information centers specializing in law, legislation and politics. Within the EU, the Eurovoc thesaurus is used in the Library of the European Parliament, the Publication Office as well as other information institutions of the EU. Besides this, the Eurovoc thesaurus is used in the libraries and documentation centers of national parliaments as well as other governmental and private organisations of member and non-member countries of the EU.
Eurovoc exists in 17 official EU languages (Spanish, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, French, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Slovene, Finnish, Swedish). Besides these official versions there are several versions in the languages of non-member countries and other states are also preparing the translation of Eurovoc into their national languages. Regular workshops and meetings of Eurovoc users are held by the representatives of institutions that manage or translate Eurovoc in individual countries.
Although Eurovoc is an EU legislation thesaurus it covers many other areas. The thematic scope of Eurovoc is defined by 21 fields, divided into 127 microtheasuri. The last version contains 6 645 descriptors, 6 669 hierarchical and 3 636 associative relationships. Numbers of non-descriptors, indexing instructions and scope notes are language specific. Through alphabetical or systematical lists of microthesauri, the structured overview of all Eurovoc lexical units according to particular microthesauri can be obtained.
THE CZECH VERSION OF THE EUROVOC THESAURUS
The first official Czech version of the Eurovoc thesaurus was developed in the second half of the 1990s as a translation of the edition 3.0. Since the autumn 2005 the Czech translation of edition 4.2. exists. The Czech Eurovoc is fully compatible with other official language versions. In the past, until May 1 2004 (the Czech Republic joining the EU), the translation of Eurovoc was carried out by the Czech Parliamentary Library. At present the Czech version of Eurovoc is maintained by the Eurovoc Maintenance Team in cooperation with our organization. THE CZECH VERSION OF THE EUROVOC THESAURUS
Parties interested in the Czech version of Eurovoc may contact the Parliamentary Library to obtain any information on Eurovoc and conditions of its use.
Further information
EUROVOC IN THE CZECH PARLIAMENT
- For the subject description of documents within the aRL library system in the Parliamentary Library, where Eurovoc has been implemented in four language versions (Czech, English, French and German). Only the Czech descriptors are used for document indexing. However, browsing in the catalogue (in the field Thesaurus term) is possible in all the above-mentioned languages.
- For the subject description of petitions sent to the Czech Parliament in the Public Relations department.
- In full-text searching within parliamentary documents where EUROVOC (10 official language versions + Czech) serves as a query-formulating support for end-users.
- For subject searching in the databases of the Czech Parliament from the 3rd and 4th election terms. These documents are subject indexed by Eurovoc descriptors. Retrospective indexing of older parliamentary documents is in progress.