ECLAS, the Commission libraries’ union catalogue

Basic information on ECLAS

is the European Commission union catalogue referencing holdings of a network of libraries, called Réseaubib. In addition to the Central Library, some 25 smaller specialised libraries and documentation centres participate in this co-operation network.

ECLAS covers the EU's official publications and documents of most intergovernmental organizations, commercial, academic and government presses, and selected periodical articles of lasting interest. In ECLAS you will find material on European integration, the political objectives and activities of the Union institutions and material on Member States of the EU, in particular their institutional, legal and socioeconomic structures or technical material necessary to the work of the various Commission departments, ranging from legal documentation to scientific and technical research papers.

The present library collection is built on the holdings of the ECSC High Authority, and those of the Euratom and EEC Commissions. It spans the whole period of European integration since the early fifties. ECLAS referencing is comprehensive from 1978 onwards and includes key material from previous years. Part of the historic holdings has still to be included in the database. For specialised historical research, the original card-catalogues or microform copies covering this pre-1978 period can be consulted on the spot. 

Please note that the ECLAS catalogue only provides bibliographical references for the collections. Loans and copy services are provided exclusively to EU officials. External users may request a special loan or copy service through the Central Library's interlibrary loans service.

EU-publications can be consulted in the more than 500 European Documentation Centers (EDCs), set up across the globe. EDCs, usually sited within universities, receive and make accessible EU documentation produced by the Parliament, the Commission and other Union institutions.

As far as European Union law is concerned we recommend you consult EUR-LEX, which is a portal created by the EU Office of Publications (EUR-OP) whose aim is to provide a complete picture of community legislation and decision-making procedures. To obtain documents published by EUR-OP, you should consult the sales outlets of the Office of Publications.

ECLAS catalogue records are indexed using the bilingual (EN/FR) ECLAS thesaurus. The indexing terms are embedded in a three-level hierarchical structure, allowing the user to swiftly move from general to specific terms and back when developing research strategies. The on-line version of the thesaurus with practical help features is easy to use.

With the increasing availability of online electronic resources Réseaubib is now cataloguing internet resources in the broad area of European integration. The bibliographic records for these items contain hyperlinks (URLs) that provide single-click access to the full electronic documents. Certain documents are only available in electronic form.

In ECLAS, electronic resources can be found by selecting the (EN) "Internet resource", (FR) "Ressource sur internet" Document Type option. RéseauBiB member libraries are also starting to store full-text e-documents on Europa, the European Union's server. The Central Library itself is creating a depository of e-documents of lasting significance, including scanned historic material.

The Libraries network uses a light version of  MARC 21 as its production format, MARC 21 being a highly structured data format with a large number of predefined data fields and subfields. Descriptive cataloguing follows AACR2.