Výhody

• terminologická štandardizácia indexačnej slovnej zásoby umožňujúca väčšiu presnosť pri vyhľadávaní dokumentov,
• viacjazyčnosť – zistenie jazykových ekvivalentov medzi identickými pojmami vyjadrenými v rôznych jazykoch umožňuje indexovať dokumenty v jazyku dokumentaristu a vyhľadávať ich v jazyku užívateľa,

Obmedzenia

EuroVoc má však aj určité obmedzenia:

• EuroVoc bol vyvinutý pre potreby všeobecných dokumentačných systémov zameraných na činnosti Európskej únie; nehodí sa na indexovanie a vyhľadávanie špecializovaných dokumentov,
• EuroVoc nemá za cieľ pokryť reálie jednotlivých štátov na dostatočne špecifickej úrovni; bola však vyvinutá snaha zohľadniť potreby užívateľov mimo inštitúcií Európskej únie.

Tezaurus EuroVoc pokrýva všetky oblasti činností európskych inštitúcií:

• POLITIKA
• MEDZINÁRODNÉ VZŤAHY
• EURÓPSKA ÚNIA
• PRÁVO
• EKONOMIKA
• OBCHOD
• FINANCIE
• SOCIÁLNE OTÁZKY
• VZDELANIE A KOMUNIKÁCIE
• VEDA
• PODNIKANIE A SÚŤAŽ
• ZAMESTNANIE A PRACOVNÉ PODMIENKY
• DOPRAVA
• ŽIVOTNÉ PROSTREDIE
• POĽNOHOSPODÁRSTVO, LESNÍCTVO A RYBÁRSTVO
• POTRAVINÁRSTVO
• VÝROBA, TECHNOLÓGIA A VÝSKUM
• ENERGIA
• PRIEMYSEL
• GEOGRAFIA
• MEDZINÁRODNÉ ORGANIZÁCIE

Niektoré oblasti sú prepracovanejšie ako iné, pretože sa viac dotýkajú kľúčových záujmov Európskej únie. EuroVoc napríklad obsahuje názvy regiónov každého členského štátu Európskej únie, ale neobsahuje názvy regiónov tretích krajín.

Zoskupenie deskriptorov podľa oblastí je do určitej miery ľubovoľné. Jednou z charakteristík EuroVoc-u je obmedzenie polyhierarchie. Deskriptory, ktoré by sa mohli zaradiť do niekoľkých oblastí, sa všeobecne priradia iba k oblasti, ktorá sa užívateľom javí ako najprirodzenejšia, aby sa uľahčila správa tezauru a obmedzil sa jeho rozsah.

Na zabezpečenie riadenia a správy tezauru sa zaviedol tento systém správy:

- skupina pre správu z Úradu pre publikácie zhromažďuje a skúma návrhy všetkých užívateľov. Zabezpečuje koordináciu prác správneho výboru, preberá zodpovednosť za vývoj v oblasti informatiky a techniky a za monitorovanie prekladov,

- správny výbor zložený zo zástupcov rôznych inštitúcií Európskej únie hlasuje o rôznych návrhoch a rozhoduje o zmenách tezauru, ktoré sa majú uskutočniť,

- riadiaci výbor dohliada na projekt a oficiálne prijíma každú novú verziu.

Do tezauru môžete prispieť svojimi návrhmi alebo úpravami, ak kliknete na tlačidlo PRIDAŤ NÁVRH, ktorým sa otvorí osobitný formulár.

The table below provides some figures about the vocabularies to which EuroVoc is aligned:

In 1982, following a comparative study on the documentary languages used internally in the institutions, the European Parliament and the European Commission decided to construct a multilingual thesaurus covering the fields which were of interest to the European institutions and would comply with the relevant international standards.

The work was based on:

• the initial draft of a monolingual thesaurus drawn up by the European Parliament, using in particular the content of the OECD macrothesaurus;
• an initial version of the ECLAS thesaurus used by the Commission’s Central Library, dating from 1978, together with the indexing frequency of its descriptors; today, the EuroVoc and ECLAS tools are still closely linked, particularly with regard to the choice of candidate descriptors;
• candidate descriptors from the Automated Central Documentation Service (SCAD);
• free descriptors used for indexing documents in the Commission’s EC-01 database, with their indexing frequency;
• free descriptors used by the Publications Office to draw up the indexes to the Official Journal.

After an initial test carried out by the European Parliament and the Publications Office, the first edition of the EuroVoc thesaurus was published in 1984 in seven languages (Danish, Dutch, German, Greek, English, French and Italian) in two volumes: an alphabetical thesaurus and a subject-oriented thesaurus. This thesaurus immediately came into use at the European Parliament and the Publications Office.

The second edition of the thesaurus, published in 1987, was the result of a thorough revision of the first edition, based on the indexing experience gained at the European Parliament and the Publications Office. Two new language versions (Portuguese and Spanish) were added to the seven original languages. Three additional versions — the multilingual thesaurus (1987), the permuted thesaurus (1989) and the terminogrammes edition (1990) — accompanied the two original versions (alphabetic thesaurus and subject-oriented thesaurus).

The second edition of EuroVoc met with increasing interest outside the EU institutions among national parliaments, in national and regional administrative bodies and even in the private sector.

In 1989, the European Parliament and the Publications Office, respective owner and manager of the thesaurus, took the initiative to organise a first seminar for EuroVoc users. This seminar provided guidance for decisions on the management and maintenance of the thesaurus.

One of these decisions was to set up a maintenance structure which would take account of the proposals of all thesaurus users, irrespective of whether they worked in the EU institutions. An update of the second edition was published in 1990 in the form of a fascicule.

The third edition of EuroVoc was published in 1995.

Following observations from users concerning the accuracy of certain language equivalents, the different language versions of EuroVoc were revised thoroughly by a multilingual team of translators and terminologists from the European Commission.

The third edition comprises three volumes per language, instead of the five volumes of the previous edition.

After consulting the users, the permuted and alphabetical presentations of the thesaurus were merged. The new alphabetical presentation provides descriptors in their semantic context and includes references for non-descriptors.

The new subject-oriented version comprises the associative relationships present in the terminogrammes edition. The publication of terminogrammes was abandoned following the difficulties experienced when publishing the second edition and owing to the fact that users were less interested in this type of presentation.

Compared with the previous edition of the thesaurus, 566 descriptors were added and 26 deleted.

Based on this edition, EuroVoc has been used as an indexing tool for the documentary databases of the Publications Office for the production of catalogues and tables of the Official Journal.

In October 1999, the Management Committee of the Publications Office entrusted the task of preparing a new edition of the EuroVoc thesaurus to two new interinstitutional committees — the Steering Committee and the Maintenance Committee. These two committees are made up of representatives of the institutions involved in the project: the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors.

The Steering Committee is responsible for directing the EuroVoc project. In particular, it determines the objectives and priorities, lays down the overall timetable, decides on the use of resources and draws up the provisional budget. The Steering Committee is the authority which officially adopts each new version. This committee meets twice a year under the chair of the European Parliament. The Publications Office takes charge of the technical organisation of these meetings and provides the committee’s secretariat.

The Maintenance Committee, made up of permanent representatives of the institutions (mainly specialist documentalists), is a key component in the system. It has the task of examining the proposals for updating the EuroVoc thesaurus, and meets twice a year. The Publications Office takes charge of the technical organisation of these meetings and coordinates the work. A standing group in the maintenance team is managed by the Publications Office.

Edition 3.1 was developed with a view to meeting the urgent indexing requirements. In addition to the terminological updates and 142 new descriptors, this edition exists in two new languages, namely Finnish and Swedish. On 22 December 2000, two Internet sites were opened on the Europa server:

• for the public, the dissemination site presenting Edition 3.1;
• for the members of the Maintenance Committee, a special system which automates the shared management of the thesaurus.

The fourth edition of EuroVoc was disseminated on the Internet on 26 November 2002, following a thorough revision of the thesaurus.

In view of changes in spelling rules, corrections were made to the Dutch, English and German versions. In accordance with users’ wishes, no changes were made to the overall structure but 364 new descriptors were added, compared with Edition 3.1, and nine were deleted.

Since February 2003, the website has offered the option of downloading the subject-oriented and permuted alphabetical versions of EuroVoc in the form of PDF files, and of consulting a multilingual list. This list replaces the old multilingual printed version.

Edition 4.1 of EuroVoc was disseminated on the Internet on 13 February 2004.

EuroVoc now contains 6 501 descriptors: 63 new descriptors; 1 descriptor was deleted.

Edition 4.2 of EuroVoc was disseminated on the Internet on 15 July 2005. It incorporates the proposals submitted by the Spanish, Czech, Polish and Swedish parliaments, and by the geographical entities and regions of the enlarged Europe.

It includes 6 645 descriptors, 155 of which are new. EuroVoc is currently available in 21 official languages, plus Croatian.

Edition 4.3 of EuroVoc was disseminated on the Internet in January 2008 following a thorough revision of domains 72 (Geography) and 76 (International organizations). It contains 6797 concepts in which new regions of Bulgaria and Romania.

Edition 4.4 of EuroVoc was the result of a thorough revision among other things according to the concepts introduced by the 'Lisbon Treaty'. It includes 6 883 thesaurus concepts of which 85 concepts are new, 142 have been updated and 28 have been classified as obsolete concepts.

All the terms in Portuguese have been revised according to the Portuguese language spelling reform. The prior lexical value remains available as Non-Preferred Terms.

For historical reasons, some concepts have been defined as 'obsolete'. They remain in the thesaurus and keep their URIs. A reference to the new concepts to be used instead is indicated by the abbreviation 'USE INSTEAD'.

In the list below the concepts which have become obsolete with EuroVoc 4.4 are sorted by the Microthesauri to which they belong.

The release 4.4 introduces the compound equivalence, in which one 'Non-Preferred Terms' leads to an association of at least two 'Preferred Terms'. The association is introduced by the abbreviation 'USE+'.

In the details of the 'Preferred Term', the 'Non Preferred Term' is presented by the abbreviation 'UF+'.

Since Edition 4.4, the EuroVoc thesaurus has been published and made available over the Internet in 23 EU languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish), plus Albanian, language of FYROM and Serbian.

All language versions have the same status: each preferred term (descriptor) in one language necessarily matches a preferred term in each of the other languages. A thesaurus concept includes by default all the language equivalent of the preferred term.

However, equivalence between the non-preferred terms (non-descriptors) in the different languages does not necessarily exist. Each language is characterised by its wealth and its semantic and cultural differences, and a concept in one language is not always represented in another language.

Release notes 4.4

Release notes 4.5

Release notes 4.6

Release notes 4.7

Release notes 4.8

Release notes 4.9

Release notes 4.9.1

Release notes 4.10

EuroVoc is split into 21 domains and 127 microthesauri.  Each domain is divided into a number of microthesauri. A microthesaurus is considered as a concept scheme with a subset of the concepts that are part of the complete EuroVoc thesaurus.

As SKOS has no rules to define a hierarchy of concept schemes, eu:Domain and eu:Microthesaurus has been modelled as a EuroVoc specific classes.

Domains are represented as instances of the class "eu:Domain" and microthesauri as instances of the class "eu:MicroThesaurus", a rdfs:subClass of skos:ConceptScheme.

The property value "eu:domain" defines the supergroup relation between a microthesaurus and its domain. Any micro thesaurus belongs to exactly 1 domain.

The name of an eu:Domain uses skos:prefLabel, with one label per language.

The domain identifier is represented using the Dublin Core property "dc:identifier" and is part of the domain name. The format of the domain identifier is 2 digits.

The name of an eu:MicroThesaurus uses skos:prefLabel, with one label per language.

The microthesaurus identifier is represented by the property dc:identifier and is part of the microthesaurus name.  The format of the microthesaurus identifier is 4 digits. The first 2-digits of the microthesaurus identifier correspond to the domain it belongs to.

One of the EuroVoc distinctive features is the limitation of polyhierarchy. However, polyhierarchy is accepted for domains 72 (Geography). Boolean property value "eu: hasPolyHierarchy "indicates whether the domain supports poly-hierarchy (true) or not (false).

The property "skos:hasTopconcept" defines the top thesaurus concepts in a microthesaurus, with no broader relationships.

This new model follows a concept-based approach where concepts are language-independent of terms which represent them.

"eu:ThesaurusConcept" represents the class of all EuroVoc concepts and is defined as subclass of skos:Concept.

Every EuroVoc concept is attached  to at least two skos:ConceptScheme instances: the global scheme "eu:EuroVoc" and one or more instances of "eu:MicroThesaurus". This attachment is using the skos:inscheme property.

A new instance "eu:Country" has been defined as a sub-set of "eu:ThesaurusConcept”, to represent a country, identified by the language-independent property value "eu:isoCountryCode" (2-char ISO country code). This property is used in domain 72 (geography).

The property "eu:useInstead" is applied to EuroVoc obsolete concepts and provides the value (cross-reference) to the new concept in use.

Thesaurus Concepts Relationships

The "skos:broader" property is attached to "eu:ThesaurusConcept" to assign the value (URI) of the broader  thesaurus concepts. By convention, "skos:broader" is used to assert a hierarchical link between a thesaurus concept and its direct parent(s), like the standard thesaurus construction BT.

The "skos:related" property of "eu:ThesaurusConcept" sets up an associative relationship to a concept associated semantically.

Instances of the class "eu:ThesaurusTerm" represent the lexical representations (terms) of concepts in a given language. This class is a subclass of the xl:Label class. 

All EuroVoc label relations are expressed between thesaurus terms and are language-dependent.

Instances of "eu:ThesaurusConcept" are linked to the corresponding terms, using the properties "xl:prefLabel" for preferred terms and "xl:altLabel" for non-preferred terms.

Terms of the thesaurus may be preferred terms or non preferred terms.

• Non preferred terms may be simple or compound non preferred terms
• The class "eu:PreferredTerm" contains the preferred terms instances of EuroVoc. Its property xl:prefLabel provides the lexical representation of the term in a given language.
• The class "eu:SimpleNonPreferredTerm" is the class of EuroVoc simple non-preferred terms.
• The class "eu:CompoundNonPreferredTerm" is the class of EuroVoc compound non preferred terms.

"eu:permutedLiteralForm" property provides the value of the permuted literal form of a term (eu:ThesaurusTerm) .

Thesaurus Terms Relations

Two classes have been settled to make the difference between the equivalence (USE/UF) and compound equivalence (USE+/UF+) relationship:

"eu:EquivalenceRelationship" is the class of equivalence relationships between  a preferred term and its equivalent simple non preferred terms and may have two property values:

• "eu:USE"          value of the preferred term of the instance
• "eu:UF"            value of the the non preferred term of the instance

"eu:CompoundEquivalence" is the class of relationships between two or more preferred terms to express a compound concept.

The class properties are:

• "eu:compoundNonPreferredTerm"  value of a preferred term component of the instance
• "eu:preferredTermComponent"   value of the compound non preferred term of the instance

Note that no equivalent concept is created in this case at the concept level.

Specific associations have been modelled to represent the relationships between a term (full name) and its acronym or short name.

These properties are specialisations of the generic "xl:labelRelation".

• "eu:acronym" property  specifies the value of the acronym of a thesaurus term;
• "eu:fullName" property specifies the value full name of a thesaurus term;
• "eu:shortName" property specifies the value of the short name of a thesaurus term;
• "eu:translationOf" property is  language-independent and specifies the value of the translation of a thesaurus term (non preferred Term) in another language.

EuroVoc notes are modelled using subproperties of "skos:note" defined in the standard, namely "skos:scopeNote", "skos:historyNote", and "skos:definition"

Versioning Properties

The value of property "eu:termReleasedWithVersion" provides the number of the EuroVoc release that introduced the concept.

The fixed string 'n/a' indicates the historic release number is not available.

Maintenance Properties for Resources

The "eu:toBeTranslated" property is used to mark a domain, microthesaurus or thesaurus term (preferred term) with no existing translation for a individual language.

The range value is the target language for a thesaurus term or a list of target languages separated by a comma for a microthesaurus or a domain.

Since Edition 4.4, the EuroVoc thesaurus has been published and made available over the Internet in 23 EU languages (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish), plus Albanian, language of FYROM and Serbian.

All language versions have the same status: each preferred term (descriptor) in one language necessarily matches a preferred term in each of the other languages. A thesaurus concept includes by default all the language equivalent of the preferred term.

However, equivalence between the non preferred terms (non descriptors) in the different languages does not necessarily exist. Each language is characterised by its wealth and its semantic and cultural differences, and a concept in one language is not always represented in another language.

Conventions

In all the language versions, the preferred terms and non preferred terms are generally in the singular, and the plural is used when the singular does not correspond to normal usage.

Abbreviations have been avoided as far as possible in order to make the thesaurus easier to understand and use. Only the acronyms of well-known international organisations have been taken as preferred terms. Specific associations have been modelled to represent the relationships between a term (full name) and its acronym or short name.

The alphabetical sorting of terms is not organised according to Formex 4 Characater encoding.

Initially, the EuroVoc thesaurus was compiled in accordance with the standards of the International Standards Organisation:

• ISO 2788-1986: Guidelines for the establishment and development of monolingual thesauri;
• ISO 5964-1985: Guidelines for the establishment and development of multilingual thesauri.

Since 2008, both standards have been revised, extended and combined into a new "ISO 25964 - Thesauri and Interoperability with other Vocabularies" standard in two parts:

• "Part 1: Thesauri for information retrieval" covers monolingual and multilingual thesaurus was issued as a draft international standard (DIS) in October 2009;
• "Part 2: Interoperability with other vocabularies" is under development is in development.

See official ISO 25964 website.

The EurVoc ontology is an extension of SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) - W3C recommendation, including appendix B, SKOS eXtension for Labels (SKOS-XL).

EuroVoc - New approach to ontology-based thesaurus management

Technical Description and Usage Conventions

EuroVoc uses semantic web technologies that reflect W3C recommendations and the latest trends in thesaurus standards.

EuroVoc 4.5: EuVoc ontology and SKOS-AP-EU application profile

EuroVoc 4.4 – Outline of the Modelling Approach

The EuroVoc ontology is an extension of SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) - W3C recommendation, including appendix B, SKOS eXtension for Labels (SKOS-XL).

The vocabularies imported in the ontology are:

• https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/skos.html (downloadable via the http protocol, accepting RDF, or via http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/skos.rdf)
• https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/skos-xl.html (downloadable via the http protocol, accepting RDF, or via http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/skos-xl.rdf)

Namespaces used in the ontology, and prefixes used in this document

Used Schema Annotations

EuroVoc resources have been modelled as direct extensions of the SKOS and SKOS-XL classes and properties. Some Dublin Core properties have been reused and re-declared without importing the complete DCMI RDF schemes. (dc:identifier)

Example query: http://eurovoc.europa.eu/4450

The query returns the related terms (RT) of the EuroVoc concept http://eurovoc.europa.eu/4450

Result