THE EUROCAT PROJECT - THE INTEGRATION OF EUROPEAN-COMMUNITY MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND DOCUMENT-ORIENTED DATABASES ON CDROM - AN EXERCISE IN MERGING DATA FROM SEVERAL DATABASES INTO A SINGLE DATABASE AS WELL AS SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF MULTI-LINGUALISM

The Institutions of the European Communities produce a number of document-oriented databases based on publications and documents distributed either by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities or by the individual EC institutions themselves. These databases are known under the names of ABEL, CATEL, CELEX, CORDIS RTD-Publications (formerly known as EABS), ECLAS, EPOQUE, EURISTOTE, RAPID and SCAD and are available via hosts such as EUROBASES, ECHO and the Office for Official Publications. Until the establishment of the EUROCAT project, no single database held a comprehensive and complete collection of all European Community documents and publications. This paper describes the approaches and development procedures taken in integrating and harmonising the data from the various databases in order to produce the truly multilingual EUROCAT database using MS-DOS-based software. The resulting database will be available on CDROM.