The Archive of European Integration (AEI) is an electronic repository and archive for research materials on the topic of European integration and unification. The AEI contains two types of documents:
Contents
In January, 2016 the AEI contained over 41,800 EC/EU documents and more than 7,300 privately produced documents, making it the largest online repository of EU documents in the world except for EU websites.
Since the creation of the AEI in February 2003, the University Library System (ULS), University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States has provided the technical and material support for the AEI. The ULS department of Information Technology - under the directorship of Tim Deliyannides - hosts and maintains the AEI as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing program. The AEI system is powered by EPrints 3, free Open Source software developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK.
History
The Archive of European Integration (AEI) was initiated in early 2003 by Dr. Phil Wilkin, then Social Sciences Bibliographer - and current Editor of the AEI - at the ULS, in collaboration with Dr. Michael Nentwich, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Technology Assessment, Vienna, Austria. Mr. Nentwich was then managing editor of the European Research Papers Archive (ERPA). ERPA was an Internet-based platform providing access to the papers of several research institutions focusing on European integration. ERPA featured only referred high quality series, featuring some form of refereeing, and the AEI was designed to complement ERPA by collecting research materials on European integration which did not necessarily meet ERPA's high quality standards. ERPA was archived on March 1, 2015.
In fall 2004, Barbara Sloan, then Head of Public Inquiries, Delegation of the European Union to the United States, Washington, DC, (then the Delegation of the European Commission to the United States) began working with the AEI on digitizing and uploading EC/EU documents onto the AEI. The Delegation's EU library collection, founded in the mid-1950s, is by far the largest collection of EC/EU documentation in North America. A comprehensive guide to this collection can be found at European Union Archival Collection at the University of Pittsburgh, pp. 31-41. The Delegation donated this collection - spanning years early 1950s to 2004 - to the ULS in 2007. The collection contains both a shelf section and a "research files" section. The latter consists of 650 linear shelf feet of mostly small working and staff documents arranged in folders by subject, and will provide thousands of hard to locate materials for digitization. There is a "finding aid" for the "research files" collection at Barbara Sloan European Union Document Collection.
The AEI immediately began using this collection as a source of documents to digitize and place onto the AEI. The goal was to complement the existing electronic collections on EU websites. The AEI Delegation collection contains two primary types of document formats: series and individual bound items in monographic form which most libraries would classify and place on shelves, and "internal working documents" which most libraries would not classify, making them more difficult to locate. At first the AEI, cognizant of the possibility that the EU itself might digitize large numbers of its older documents, took a conservative approach, digitizing mostly the internal working documents (COM docs) and staff working documents (SEC docs) and other select documents. Indeed, in 2009-2010 the EU did digitize and place on EU Bookshop over 2,000,000 pages of its bound documents.
In 2011-2012 the AEI adopted a new, long-range policy regarding digitization, for several reasons. First, the AEI learned that it was unlikely that the EU would perform more large-scale digitization. Consequently, the AEI could develop a true "archive" where the goal would be to digitize as many documents as resources allowed.
Second, the two EU websites containing the bulk of EC/EU documentation - EU Bookshop and Eur-Lex: Access to European Union Law - contained only a portion of these documents. In EU Bookshop, many of the annuals and series there are not complete runs. Either they do not contain earlier documents from the 1950-60s, and/or volumes are missing throughout the run. Eur-Lex contains a considerable number of full text COM documents published 1990-2000 and nearly all 2001-present, but very few which were published before 1990. Despite their importance for research purposes, there is no comprehensive list of COM documents for the early years. Two indexes published 1976-1986 listed all COM docs, but there is no available written record which contains the titles of previous COM docs. The AEI Delegation collection contains nearly all of these documents which are missing from the EU Bookshop and Eur-Lex, which it will digitize.
Third, navigating the EU Bookshop during large parts of the day is very slow, and much slower on older computers. In order to make documents easily available, the AEI decided to download annual and serial documents from the EU Bookshop and place them on the AEI, thereby furnishing full runs of all in one place. In most cases these runs will go from earliest volume up through 2000. It is likely all these runs will be completed sometime in 2017. Here are some examples (NOTE: some annuals and serials have been only partially uploaded):
Annual reports - located on Browse by EU Annual Reports - about 900 have been located. Examples:
Series and periodicals - located on Browse by EU Series and Periodicals - about 180 have been located: Examples:
Institutional newsletters and information bulletins - such as institutional and DG newsletters, etc. (scattered throughout Browse by EU Series and Periodicals) - over 100 have been located.
Numerous documents not part of any series. Mostly one-off documents Commission working documents and reports.