Figel' launches EU Bookshop
The EU Publications Office (OPOCE) has launched an online bookshop, providing a single access point to the various publications of the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies. The portal was opened by Ján Figel', Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism, who is responsible for relations with OPOCE. 'EU Bookshop is a milestone in facilitating and improving access and use of EU information in a multiplicity of languages,' said Mr Figel'. Although the Official Journal is easily accessible through the online services EUR-Lex and TED (managed by OPOCE), searching for other EU publications often proved to be much more time consuming. Several thousand publications are issued every year by OPOCE, and the online versions are scattered around the various websites of their author institutions. EU Bookshop makes immediate access to the content of these publications possible through a comprehensive bibliography. With the principal navigation pages for the Bookshop currently available in 19 languages (all EU official languages except Maltese), the site provides multilingual access to nearly 4,000 publications. Recent publications in PDF format may be downloaded free of charge, and users can also order a printed copy of any cost-free publication. Priced publications may also be downloaded and ordered online. As well as many well-known titles such as the EU's Statistical Yearbook and, this year, the European Constitution, OPOCE also publishes a number of publications relating to the EU's research and innovation programmes, including CORDIS focus. The Bookshop is also a constantly evolving catalogue, replacing the voluminous print catalogues of the past that rapidly became obsolete. The number of publications in the catalogue will clearly increase as new titles are published and older ones added to the archive.