European Documentation Centre

The European Documentation Centre (EDZ) of the ZBW offers information about the publications of the European Union. You can visit a European Documentation Centre at both locations of the ZBW in Kiel or Hamburg, or you can seek advice by e-mail or telephone. The most frequently requested publications of the EU in the ZBW are:

• official journals
• documents of the European Commission
• statistics
• publications of the European Central Bank
• individual studies from the various Directorates-General

European Documentation Centres are a part of the European Commission’s Europe Direct Information Network. Their mission is to facilitate local access to the publications of the European Union. For this purpose the European Commission provides every centre as comprehensively as possible with its publications. Since the early 1960s the European Commission has created a worldwide network of European Documentation Centres. There are 50 centres in Germany. The European Documentation Centre of the ZBW in Kiel is the only one in Schleswig-Holstein.

Since 1952 the ZBW systematically acquires all publications of the European Communities and its organs. They are indexed and recorded in the database ECONIS. The publications are freely available on site in Kiel and Hamburg. Copied articles and books can be delivered with costs directly to your work place via document delivery services such as subito.

Within the framework of "EDZ ArchiDok" European Documentation Centres in five member countries (including the EDCs of the ZBW) share the task of collecting electronic full texts from all fields of activitiy of the European Union. The project intends a systematic indexing of relevant electronic publications posted on the web pages of the EU’s organs and institutions.