How to get the most out of EU information : services for librarians and information providers.
Date: 2019-08-11
Institutions: Publications Office of the European Union
Subjects: Publications Office of the European Union, free service, information profession, information service, information storage and retrieval, provision of services

How to get  
the most out of 
EU information –  
services for librarians  
and information providers

Publications

Public procurement
notices

Open data

Ofﬁcial 
directory

Law

Research
results

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2019

© European Union, 2019

Reuse is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.

The reuse policy of European Commission documents is regulated by Decision 2011/833/EU 
(OJ L 330, 14.12.2011, p. 39).

Print 
PDF 

ISBN 978-92-78-42011-6  doi:10.2830/319033  OA-01-19-665-EN-C
ISBN 978-92-78-42012-3  doi:10.2830/10042  OA-01-19-665-EN-N

The Publications Office of 
the European Union —  
your provider of official  
EU information

The Publications Office of the European Union is the official publisher of the EU 
institutions, agencies and bodies. As such, it is the central provider of access to 
publications of the European Union, including legal publications, open data and 
other information.

The Publications Office makes this content available in a variety of digital and 
physical formats with the aim of facilitating access to, and reuse of, all official 
information coming from the EU. In parallel, it ensures its long-term preservation. 
Through a suite of services, it offers access to its various collections, covering 
legal and other publications, public procurement, open data, research results 
and contact information of the EU administration.

Moreover, it has developed a number of supporting services aimed specifically 
at information specialists. These include metadata-sharing services, reusable 
controlled vocabularies and much more.

In this brochure you will be introduced to these services and learn how to get 
the most out of this wealth of EU information.

1

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providers 
 
Our collections

The Publications Office manages a number of websites providing access to its 
various collections. Each one is adapted to maximise the potential of its specific 
collection while ensuring ease of access.

Legal information

EUR-Lex – discover the world of EU law

> eur-lex.europa.eu

EUR-Lex is the gateway to EU law and the largest available resource on it, 
providing free access to, and information about, public legal documents from 
the European Union. It is updated on a regular basis, with new documents being 
added every day, and is available in all the official languages of the EU.

EUR-Lex collections

EUR-Lex contains collections of EU law documents, including treaties, legal 
acts, consolidated texts, European Free Trade Association documents, 
preparatory documents, EU case-law and international agreements. It gives 
access to the authentic electronic versions of the Official Journal of the European 
Union (OJ), containing EU legislation and other official documents of the EU 
institutions, agencies and bodies. For those looking for an easy-to-read and 
concise overview of the main aspects of legal acts, EUR-Lex provides access 
to summaries of EU legislation. Moreover, EUR-Lex allows you to follow the 
complete legislative procedures, from the initial proposal by the European 
Commission to the adopted act published in the OJ. It also contains documents 
showing the internal decision-making process of the EU institutions prior to the 
adoption of final acts. Finally, EUR-Lex provides references to — and for those 
Member States that agreed, also the texts of — national transposition measures 
as well as references to national case-law in relation to EU law.

3

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersA wide range of access and search options 

EUR-Lex offers a wide range of options to access 
and search within these various collections. You can 
quickly consult the latest issue of the OJ, search for 
documents with one of the various search functions, 
access documents through menus or check for the 
latest publications. The website is also equipped 
with a wide range of additional functionalities 
designed to help you access the information you 
need in the most convenient way. For example, 
you can view documents in a multilingual display, 
with up to three linguistic versions of the same 
document displayed synoptically on the screen. 
Registered users benefit from extra functionalities 
(save documents or searches, create RSS feeds, 
possibility to customise the site according to your 
personal preferences).

4

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersPublic procurement

Tenders Electronic Daily — business 
opportunities in Europe

> ted.europa.eu

Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) is the online version of 
the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European 
Union, dedicated to European public procurement. It 
is the official entry point for all business opportunities 
involving public procurement contracts for values 
above EU thresholds (EUR 144 000) in the European 
Union, the European Economic Area and beyond. 
Annually, more than 520 000 procurement notices 
worth in total approximately EUR 460 billion per year (2.5 % 
of EU GDP) are published on TED.

New procurement notices are uploaded to the TED website every morning 
(Monday to Friday). Information about every procurement document is 
published in the 24 EU official languages and so are the full notices from 
the EU institutions. Notices are also made available in XML so that you can 
download them for publishing on your own portals or websites, thus promoting 
opportunities across the web.

The aim of TED is to disseminate information to as wide an audience as possible, 
to ensure the transparency of public contracts and thus to promote equal 
treatment in the award procedures. Currently 96.14 % of the procurement 
notices published on TED come from EU Member States, with the remaining 
3.86 % split between procurement notices from European Economic Area 
countries, the EU institutions and other organisations, and several other sources.

5

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersPublications

EU Publications — the online library of the European Union

> publications.europa.eu/publications

If you are looking for publications about the European Union and its policies, the EU 
Publications website is the place to go. It is a gateway to approximately 100 000 titles 
from the EU institutions, agencies and bodies, gathering together publications in more 
than 50 languages, some dating back as far as 1952.

Electronic versions of the available publications can be viewed or downloaded free of 
charge. Print copies can also be ordered through the site, in most cases for free; however, 
exceptions and conditions apply. For all free-of-charge publications, delivery to EU 
Member States, candidate countries and the European Economic Area is also free.

A wide range of topics and search options

The EU Publications website covers a wide range of subjects, themes, purposes and 
intended audiences. To make it easier to find information on a specific topic or for 
a specific audience, the website offers thematic bundles. For example, there is the 
‘Teachers and Students’ section with publications that can be used as classroom material 
and a special corner for children. Those interested in the history of European integration 
can find a bundle of publications devoted to the major milestones on the path to the 
European Union as we know it today. There are also sections dedicated to policy areas 
such as migration and to subjects such as EU funding, the EU budget, consumer rights 
and many others.

We want you to explore the collection from the starting point that suits you best. We 
therefore offer several navigation and search options including by keywords, title, author, 
language and more.

Benefits of becoming a registered user

If you would like to benefit from the extended functionalities offered by the EU 
Publications website you can create an account. As a registered user, you can personalise 
your browsing experience, set preferred languages, request news alerts and save your 
searches

6

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersOpen data

What is open data?

Open data may be any piece of information made available by public authorities 
on the web to everyone for free reuse. This can include statistics, interactive 
maps, vocabularies, registers of entities, scientific databases, legal documents, 
geospatial information, lists of items/places/projects and much more.

EU Open Data Portal — your access point to open data from 
the EU administration

> data.europa.eu/euodp

The EU Open Data Portal is a single point of access to a growing range of data 
coming from the institutions, agencies and bodies of the European Union. These 
data are free to use and reuse for commercial or non-commercial purposes. 
By providing easy and free access to data, the portal aims to promote their 
innovative use and unleash their economic potential. It also aims to help foster 
the transparency and accountability of the EU administration.

How does it work?

The EU Open Data Portal provides a metadata catalogue giving access to data 
from the institutions, agencies and bodies of the EU. It aggregates descriptions 
of datasets from these various data sources and presents them in a harmonised 
way to make sure they comply with quality standards and the technical criteria 
for easy discovery, exchange and reuse. To facilitate reuse these metadata are 
based on common encoding rules and standardised vocabularies (DCAT (1) and 
DC (2)). Data are available in both human- and machine-readable formats for 
immediate reuse. The portal also displays a selection of applications built around 
EU data.

1  Data Catalog Vocabulary, an RDF vocabulary designed to 

facilitate interoperability between data catalogues.

2  Dublin Core, a metadata schema used to describe 
resources, including physical and web resources.

7

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersEuropean Data Portal — public sector information 
harvested from public data portals across European 
countries, and open data use cases, analyses and studies

> europeandataportal

The European Data Portal harvests the metadata of public sector information 
available on public data portals across European countries. These portals can 
be national, regional, local or domain-specific. They cover the 28 EU Member 
States, European Economic Area countries, countries involved in the EU’s 
neighbourhood policy and Switzerland.

The European Data Portal addresses the whole data value chain: from data 
publishing to data reuse. Information regarding the provision of data and the 
benefits of reusing data is also included.

Going beyond the harvesting of metadata, the objective of the European Data 
Portal is to improve accessibility and increase the value of open data.

Dedicated sections within the European Data Portal

Search Datasets. Categories have been established to structure the metadata 
harvested from the various countries. These categories follow the revision of 
the DCAT Application Profile and have been mapped against the EuroVoc 
thesaurus.

Providing Data. This section gives an insight into understanding open data 
from the perspective of a data provider. In addition, instructions are offered for 
those who wish their data portal to be harvested by the European Data Portal.

Using Data. How open data is used, as well as the economic benefits of open 
data, are detailed in this section.

Resources. This section includes eLearning modules about open data as well 
as training guides and a knowledge base referencing publications around open 
data and featured projects.

8

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersResearch results

CORDIS – bringing you exploitable results of EU research 
and innovation

> cordis.europa.eu  

What is CORDIS?

The Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) is the 
European Commission’s primary source of results from the projects funded by 
the EU’s framework programmes for research and innovation (FP1 to Horizon 
2020). Its mission is to bring research results to professionals in the field to foster 
open science, create innovative products and services and stimulate growth 
across Europe.

It provides information and data through the CORDIS website, its research*eu 
magazines and the EU Open Data Portal.

What can you find on CORDIS?

CORDIS has a rich and structured public repository with all project information 
held by the European Commission such as project factsheets, participants, reports, 
deliverables and links to open-access publications. You can search the database, 
set up customised email or RSS notifications, and download open data in reusable 
formats and as bulk extractions.

CORDIS also produces its own range of publications and articles to make it easier 
for you to find relevant results for a specific domain. The print editions are in 
English while the web versions are also available in French, German, Italian, Polish 
and Spanish.

•  Research*eu magazine highlights the most promising project outcomes in a range 
of domains, with a focus on a particular theme in every issue. It is published 10 times 
a year; you can download or order each issue (subscribe for free postal delivery 
worldwide).

•  CORDIS Results Packs are collections of up-to-date articles that focus on a specific 
theme for specialised audiences; they are available online and as print brochures.

•  Results in brief are articles that summarise the main outcomes at the end of each 
selected project, explaining the project’s achievements and shining a spotlight on 
the next steps.

•  News and events articles provide topical updates from ongoing projects, as well as 

articles contributed directly by project teams.

9

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersContact information

EU Whoiswho – the official directory of the European Union

> whoiswho.europa.eu 

EU Whoiswho is the official directory of the European Union administration, with 
professional contact information for over 40 000 individuals, including Members 
of the European Parliament and managers and employees of the EU institutions, 
agencies and bodies. It also provides the addresses of all these administrational 
entities along with maps of their locations.

10

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersSupporting services for 
information professionals

Standardised metadata and controlled 
vocabularies

EU Vocabularies

The EU Vocabularies website (3) is part of the EU open data initiative 
and provides free public access to controlled vocabularies managed by 
the EU institutions, agencies and bodies. Its users can access metadata 
from a large number of controlled vocabularies such as EuroVoc, 
authority tables, ontologies, schemas, alignments and data 
models. This ever-growing collection of controlled vocabularies aims 
to:

•  facilitate discoverability and reuse of these assets;

•  support semantic and multilingual interoperability and contribute 

to a better exchange and linking of data;

•  describe and facilitate retrieving of resources in corporate search.

EuroVoc (4) is a multilingual and multidisciplinary thesaurus covering 
the activities of the EU and in particular those of the European 
Parliament. It contains terms in all EU official languages and is used 
for indexing and information retrieval mainly by users from public 
administrations, the private sector and academia.

To ensure broader coverage, EuroVoc is aligned with more specialised 
thesauri, such as the thesaurus of the European Environmental Agency 
(Gemet), the thesaurus of the Food and Agriculture Organisation 
(Agrovoc), the thesaurus of the United Nations (UNBIS) and the 
thesaurus of the German National Library for Economics (STW) (5).

3  https://publications.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies
4  https://publications.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/th-

dataset/-/resource/dataset/eurovoc

5  https://publications.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/

alignments

11

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersAuthority tables (6) have been designed to harmonise 
codes and related labels used across various information 
systems. The Publications Office maintains authority tables 
that cover concepts of general interest such as countries and 
languages, as well as more EU-specific concepts such as the 
names of the EU institutions or EU legislative procedures. 
Each concept in an authority table is identified by a unique 
identifier and is associated to one or more labels translated 
into all the official EU languages.

EuroVoc and the authority tables are used for the exchange 
of information not only by the EU institutions but also by the 
public administrations of the EU Member States.

The dissemination platform, EU Vocabularies, contains various 
types of controlled vocabularies increasingly maintained with 
the vocabulary management tool VocBench 3.

VocBench 3

Originally developed by the Food and Agriculture 
Organisation, VocBench 3 (7) is an open-source tool designed 
to meet the needs of the semantic web and available to 
the EU institutions, agencies and bodies for collaborative 
thesaurus management and editing. It enables the 
maintenance of their multilingual controlled vocabularies 
such as taxonomies, thesauri, authority lists, glossaries and 
ontologies. Designed to meet the needs of the semantic 
web, VocBench 3 enhances interoperability of controlled 
vocabularies according to W3C standards and Linked 
Open Data principles. The Publications Office leads further 
development of VocBench 3 in collaboration with the 
University of Rome Tor Vergata, with funding from the ISA2 
Programme (8).

SKOS

XML

HTML

XSD

6  https://publications.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/authority-

tables

7  https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/solutions/vocbench3_en
8  https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/home_en

12

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersHow to embed our content  
in your website

The portal of the Publications Office of the European Union (publications.europa.eu) 
gives centralised access to all our information collections previously described. In there 
you can find more than 1 million individual titles of legal documents and all other 
publications authored by the European institutions, agencies and bodies. These are 
available for searching and downloading to promote the reuse of this content. The 
portal also offers widgets — a free and easy way to embed content in a website or a 
blog.

Widgets allow webmasters to display titles from the portal of the Publications Office by 
incorporating them directly into their own web pages. As such, they are a useful tool to 
foster the reuse of content across various platforms. There are four types of widgets that 
can be embedded in a website.

•  A search form. You can embed a search form on your website enabling your users to 

search for a title directly in our catalogue.

•  Results of a search. You can embed a list of titles from our portal based on a 

predefined search. It is possible, for example, to request a search on a specific topic, 
by date or by a specific author. The list will be automatically updated once new search 
results become available on the portal.

•  Selected publications. You can choose specific titles (whether EU publications or 

legal documents) for display on your website.

•  Publication details: you can select and display the details of a given publication or 

legal document, including a PDF viewer of the item.

•  Organisation detail (EU Whoiswho). This widget will show the organisational 

structure of a European institution, and the hierarchical positions of staff.

Any or all of these widgets can be created and made visible on your website in a few 
easy steps. Sign in to the portal of the Publications Office (publications.europa.eu), and 
go to My profile/My widgets (publications.europa.eu/en/my-widgets).

YOUR WEBSITE

13

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersSharing of metadata and OPac —  
the Publications Office online public 
access catalogue

> opac.publications.europa.eu

At the Publications Office, our in-house team of specialist librarians analyses 
each and every EU publication. We describe the content using indexing terms 
for the subject areas covered and an abstract/summary where available and 
create a full bibliographic record containing descriptive metadata in accordance 
with international standards. Each record contains a link to the publication 
details page on the EU Publications website. Where possible this is a persistent 
link based on a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), thus giving you a reliable and 
stable reference to the item described.

Access through OPac

This site provides a self-service option where you can currently find and 
download more than 330 000 individual bibliographic records free of charge 
and with no need of a login.

If you are a librarian or other information professional, you can download the 
metadata of your chosen publications into your own catalogues. As each record 
contains a link to the content, your users can then directly access it through a 
single search strategy on your website.

All you need to do is search on the site using a standard set of criteria and select 
the records you require. You can then download them in a number of standard 
formats, including Marc21 and EndNote, and upload them straight into your 
own cataloguing system.

Access through your content provider

We are working with several information aggregators to distribute our records 
through their services. They include commercial discovery services as well as a 
number of libraries. So do check with your current discovery service provider 
or partner library to see if they have already included the metadata for EU 
publications in their services to you.

14

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersExport service on request

If you prefer, we can also offer a customised metadata export, based on your 
own requirements. These exports can be run on a weekly or monthly basis and 
cover all records modified/created during the preceding period. You can further 
limit your choice by opting to receive only monographs and/or individual 
issues of a periodical. You can also decide which publication languages you 
are interested in and receive records in the language of the publication or 
translated into one of the 24 EU official languages (i.e. the language of your own 
catalogue).

15

How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providersGetting in touch with the EU

In person

All over the European Union there are hundreds of Europe Direct information centres. 
You can find the address of the centre nearest you at: 
europa.eu/european-union/contact

On the phone or by email

Europe Direct is a service that answers your questions about the European Union. You 
can contact this service 

–  by freephone: 00 800 6 7 8 9 10 11 (certain operators may charge for these calls), 

–  at the following standard number: +32 22999696 or 

–  by electronic mail via: europa.eu/european-union/contact

Finding information about the EU

Online

Information about the European Union in all the official languages of the EU is available 
on the Europa website at: europa.eu

EU Publications

You can download or order EU publications from the EU Publications website at: 
publications.europa.eu/publications. Multiple copies of free publications may be 
obtained by contacting Europe Direct or your local information centre (see europa.eu/
european-union/contact).

EU law and related documents

For access to legal information from the EU, including all EU law since 1951 in all the 
official language versions, go to EUR-Lex at: eur-lex.europa.eu

Open data from the EU institutions, agencies and bodies

The EU Open Data Portal (data.europa.eu/euodp/en/data) provides access to datasets 
from the EU institutions, agencies and bodies. These data can be downloaded and 
reused for free, both for commercial and non-commercial purposes.

Public sector information from across European countries

The European Data Portal (data.europa.eu/europeandataportal) harvests the 
metadata of public sector information available on public data portals across European 
countries. It addresses the whole data value chain: from data publishing to data reuse.

Contact

If you have any questions about the services 
presented in this brochure, please write to us at:

info@publications.europa.eu 

You can follow us on:

Facebook “f ” Logo

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CMYK / .ai

EU Law and Publications

@EULawDataPubs

@EUPublications

@EURLex

@CORDIS_EU

@EUTenders

@EU_opendata 

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How to get the most out of EU information – services for librarians and information providers