EuroVoc, Eurlex, EU Bookshop Danica Maleková, Publications Office STS Bratislava, 22 October 2010

22 Contents The role of Publications Office with regard to terminology work Information retrieval What is a controlled vocabular y  Different types of vocabularies Understand a thesaurus (in general) and EuroVoc  Structure, components, relations, EuroVoc  Coverage, limitations, maintenance, use Eurlex EU Bookshop Questions & Answers

3 The role of Publications Office with regard to terminology work Publications Office manages:  Eurlex – electronic access to EU law  EU Bookshop – electronic access to EU general, scientific and legal publications including archives  EuroVoc – a controlled vocabulary tool  Interinstitutional Style Guide

4 INFORMATION RETRIEVAL C ontent indexation  Describe s the concepts represented in a document  Indexers assign indexing terms (descriptors, preferred terms) to the document  Identify the concept to retrieve the most relevant information

5 Search results - Principles Relevance  Relationship between a document and a request  The document is relevant to a topic or replies to the user request. Pertinence  Relationship between a document and an information need  Relevant and useful for a user  Relevant but the user does n o t find it useful (language, level of comprehensibility, document type) Search failure  Not relevant results (noise)  Non-retrieved results (silence)

6 Why do we need a controlled vocabulary? A controlled vocabulary is a consistent set of terms/expressions, along with rules of usage to be followed when indexing or searching. Guide both the indexer and the searcher to select the same term or combination of terms to represent a given subject. Nature of the indexing language  A list of terms acceptable to users  Mechanisms for structuring and using those terms  Minimize the ambiguity of isolated terms that may be out of context

7 Controlled Vocabulary – Thesauri examples Multi-domains:  Eurovoc Eurovoc  Eclas (EC Library) Eclas  Unesco, UNBIB (United Nations) UnescoUNBIB Specialized :  Cedefop (Vocational Training) Cedefop  Gemet (EEA - environment) Gemet  Agrovoc (FAO - agriculture) Agrovoc  EINIRAS (International affairs) EINIRAS

8 Controlled Vocabulary – Thesauri examples EuroVocUNESCO Thesaurus UNBIB

9 Thesaurus - Principles A controlled vocabulary  In which concepts are represented Formally organized by relationships between concepts  Concepts are made explicit and unambiguous  Limited to one meaning Preferred terms (PT)  Descriptors  Indexing terms Non Preferred terms (NPT)  Non descriptors  Never used for indexing  Lead-in entries for term equivalents (synonyms, quasi- synonyms) to the Preferred Terms

10 EuroVoc - Categories Microthesauri 21 domains 2-digit notation + heading 127 microthesauri 4-digit notation + heading Not used for indexing

11 Microthesaurus (MT) RELATIONSRELATIONS CONCEPTS TOP TERM NARROWER – SPECIFIC TERMS (NT) LEVELS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 EuroVoc - Microthesaurus – View the hierarchy BROADER – GENERIC TERMS (BT) LEVELS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

12 EuroVoc - Associative relationship (RT)

13 EuroVoc - Term equivalence (USE/UF)

14 EuroVoc - Vocabulary control - Qualifiers Qualifier symbol: () Role: term disambiguation

15 EuroVoc - Coverage General and multidisciplinary  21 fields  127 microthesaurus  Set of 6797 indexing terms (concepts)  Built-up for EU institutions and national parliaments  Covers both Community and national point of view, with emphasis on parliamentary activities

16 EuroVoc - Multilingual content Multilingual controlled vocabulary 22 official languages  Irish not available 2 other languages: Croatian and Serbian Links to Eurovoc “hosted” versions  A regional language (Basque)  The Russian version (Douma web site) Exact equivalence between indexing terms (Preferred Terms)

17 EuroVoc – Limitations Not specialized Specific national situations are not covered

18 EuroVoc – Permuted entries One entry on each significant word of an expression region dependent on fishing Fishing, region dependent on peripheral region Region, periperal Community regional policy regional policy, Community regional disparity disparity, regional Regionalstatistik (DE) statistik, Regional~ No stop words  EN: and, the, a, or, …  DE: für, an, von, vom, der, die, das, ein, …  FR: à, le, la, les, et, pour, vers, …

19 EuroVoc – Maintenance 1 Maintenance Team (Publications Office)  EuroVoc maintenance  Coordinate the work of the Maintenance Committee  Responsible for IT developments Thesaurus Management System Website  Manage translation of terms  Help-Desk

20 EuroVoc - Maintenance 2 inter-institutional Committees The Maintenance Committee  Examines and votes on the proposals for updating Eurovoc  Decides on the amendments to be made  Meet twice a year – Chair by the Publications Office. The Steering Committee  Supervises the EuroVoc projects (objectives, priorities, resources and budgetary issues)  Officially adopts each new version  Chair by a representative of an EU institution.

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