Pitt Library System to Receive Most Extensive Collection of Public European Community/EU Documents, Publications in North America

Issue Date: 
May 29, 2007

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University will make collection available to Hillman Library patrons and upload a large portion of it onto the Internet

Pitt’s University Library System (ULS) will receive the entire European Union depository collection—the most extensive collection of public European Community/European Union documents and publications in North America—from the Delegation of the European Commission to the USA in Washington, D.C., and make it available intact to patrons of Pitt’s Hillman Library.

ULS also will digitize a large portion of the collection and upload it onto the Internet as part of Pitt’s Archive of European Integration (AEI).

The delegation—which established its collection soon after the formation of the European Coal and Steel and Community (1951), the founding institution of what is now known as the European Union (EU)—recently decided to divest itself of this library and selected Pitt’s bid for the collection.

“The addition of this unique collection marks yet another notable milestone in our long-term commitment to the University’s European Union Center of Excellence and the European Studies Center; it also continues our mission to aggressively acquire European Union documents and make them available to researchers and the public,” said Pitt University Librarian Rush G. Miller, director of ULS. “Our plan to digitize a large number of the collection’s documents for our Archive of European Integration will make them available to anyone in the world.”

“This acquisition solidifies the University of Pittsburgh’s reputation as being one of the very best places to carry out research on the European Union,” said Alberta Sbragia, Pitt professor of political science, director of Pitt’s European Union Center of Excellence and European Studies Center, and the University’s Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg Chair.

The EU depository collection contains a complete set of the publications of the EU institutions and agencies, as well as partial collections of relevant private commercial publishers, such international organizations as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Council of Europe, and European trade associations. Nearly all documents in the collection published since 1973 are in English; earlier documents are mostly in French.

Pitt’s AEI is an online archive and repository that collects and uploads two types of materials on the topic of European integration: independently produced research materials, including working or policy papers and conference papers; and official EU government documents not available in electronic format on EU databases.

The EU depository collection will be in the company of such other unique and important Pitt library special collections as the comprehensive World War II archive recently donated by Pitt professor Donald M. Goldstein; the archive of Pitt alumnus and trustee, former Pennsylvania Governor, and former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh; the archive of the late Pennsylvania House Speaker K. Leroy Irvis, a Pitt alumnus and former trustee who was the first African American speaker of a state house in the nation since Reconstruction; and the Eduardo Lozano Latin American Collection, one of the most extensive Latin American collections in the United States.