The EUDISED Project: Present Situation, Problems and Prospects.

Established in 1968, The European Documentation and Information System for Education (EUDISED) has passed through several developmental stages. Initially, early attempts to apply computer techniques to educational documentation and information were not coordinated between European countries. Interest in the American ERIC system resulted in two studies. The first study (1970) concerned the problems of using a common thesaurus of descriptors and a common format. The second study (1971) designed a proposed system. In 1974, the multilingual EUDISED Thesaurus was published and field experiments began to test the proposed system. In the primary experiment twelve national agencies completed a common worksheet on selected R & D projects in their countries, and the results were published in the EUDISED R & D Bulletin. This and other experiments led to increased standardization between countries regarding indexing, abstracting, and dissemination. Present concerns are for the maintenance of a self-sustaining system; the expansion of computer access to all agencies; and the access to ERIC material and data from various international organizations. (DAG)