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EDC Network ESO Project Training Course, June 2015

29 June 2015
Ian Thomson

Ian Thomson

A group of four men and two women in the EDC
Two men are standing on the left behind a seated woman. Another woman and man are standing on the right, in front of a plasma screen.

We held our second EDC Network ESO Training Week from 22 to 26 June 2015. We welcomed visitors from Italy, Croatia and the United States:

  • Stefania Tesser – University of Venice
  • Franco Botta – Sapienza University, Rome
  • Aleksandra Car – University of Zagreb
  • Philip Wilkin – University of Pittsburgh

The first successful training week took place in June 2014. Now, an increasing number of EDC colleagues and others around the world, along with our interns here at the Cardiff EDC, are helping us to make European Sources Online (ESO) more successful as an added value European information service, freely available to anyone in the world who seeks substantive information on the European Union, the countries of Europe and the issues of concern to citizens and stakeholders in Europe.

Two men and a woman with their backs to the camera are looking at a computer screen

Participants learnt about the objectives and operational practices of ESO and how to add bibliographical sources and information guides to the ESO database. They also learnt how to deal with the incidence of broken hyperlinks and the measures we have in place to keep on top of this challenge. The training, led by Ian Thomson and Frederico Rocha, was primarily hands-on.

In addition, we had time for some discussion-based sessions. Phil Wilkin spoke to the group about the Archive of European Integration, for which he is responsible, and which is a major complementary information tool to ESO. We discussed all aspects of our existing collaboration and ways of further developing co-operation.

Two men and two women are seated around a table in a meeting room. Two men are standing on either side of a screen displaying 'Archive of European Integration (AEI)'

We actively advise AEI on what organisations to approach to request permission to store their information sources in the safe AEI repository. ESO then links to these sources via AEI, which reduces substantially the incidence of broken hyperlinks. We will also be linking ESO Information Guides on particular EU policies and institutions to equivalent guides in AEI to key primary documents, and vice versa. These are very simple but effective ways of showing the added value of co-operation.

On the final morning of the training we also took the opportunity to have a discussion on ‘EDCs – Future of the Network’, the subject of the newly launched 3rd Pan-European Working Group organised by DG COMM of the European Commission. Ian Thomson is the UK representative on the PEWG and took the opportunity to hear the views of our European colleagues on the activities and challenges of their EDCs in Italy and Croatia, and how they saw the future.