Chadwyck-Healey Website aids EU transparency

Electronic publishing specialist Chadwyck-Healey has launched a new Internet-based European Union information service in Brussels, Liz Bury writes. The service brings together documents and literature from all EU institutions.

KnowEurope co-ordinates over 20 sources of EU information including the Penguin Companion to the European Union, European Access and European Voice—weekly current affairs sources—and literature from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Speaking at the launch in the European Parliament, Neil Kinnock, vice-president of the European Commission, said KnowEurope was "a very strong and practical demonstration of effective co-operation between commercial publishers and EU publishers". KnowEurope "contributes directly to the transparency of the Union", Mr Kinnock said.

Legislation and policy documents, news and current affairs, research and analysis and directory information can all be accessed via the KnowEurope Website. The site was designed to have a clear approach to presenting information, stripping out jargon and busy graphics that might obscure user access.

A simple search facility retrieves information on a keyword basis from varying sources: a search on tax harmonisation, for example, produces legislative documents, news articles and research papers. The "question and answer" section asks relevant questions and provides straightforward explanations with useful links, and the bulletin link leads users to a carefully edited choice of current affairs articles.

Plans for a personalised e-mail alert system are under way, and Chadwyck-Healey hopes to have this service up and running within the next few months. The "Updates by e-mail" service will enable users to design a personal profile and be alerted by a weekly e-mail if any new information on their chosen topics becomes available on the site.

The KnowEurope site, which is primarily aimed at librarians, students and business users, charges a subscription fee for its use.

One drawback of the site is that some of the information it sources, such as Celex, the EU legislative database, requires an additional payment. Another potential problem is that information is not consistently up-to-date. While news stories from European Voice are updated weekly, the Penguin Companion to European Union is updated about once every 18 months only, and a mix of new and older information presented side by side in straight list is potentially misleading.

But Ian Thompson, editor of KnowEurope and head of the European Documentation Centre based at Cardiff University, told The Bookseller: "We have pulled together a mixture of different types of documentation from different sources. I think we are getting it right for lots of different users." Mr Thompson has been editor of the weekly newsletter European Access for 20 years, and now edits the electronic version, European Access Plus.

KnowEurope is a sister site to KnowUK, which was launched by Chadwyck-Healey last year. Julie Corroll-Davis, vice-president of publishing at Bell & Howell, which recently bought Chadwyck-Healey, said the publisher plans to develop more "Know" sites in the future, including French and German language services. The European Documentation Centre in Zagreb was the first customer to subscribe to the new service.