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YEARS OF EUROPEAN ONLINE ANNÉES DE EN LIGNE ...

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MEETING <strong>OF</strong> THE COUNCIL WORKING PARTY<br />

ON LEGAL DATA PROCESSING<br />

that Lovdata is the reason the referendum in 1992 went badly. But surely it was<br />

not one of our more glorious moments.<br />

we had to reorder a completely new stack of tapes and start from the beginning.<br />

the overlow documents also haunted us in another way. Some of them<br />

appeared as ghosts — empty of all content except for a few ields. we theorised<br />

a lot about their meaning — what were they, conceived but not yet<br />

born? — and we waited eagerly for the Publications Ofice to give their bodies<br />

content and meaning. what we discovered was that many of them were indeed<br />

ghosts — either deceased, that is their validity expired before 1 July 1979,<br />

or existing only in another universe, that is they existed only in another language<br />

version. And then some of them did indeed acquire texts after a while.<br />

fILE NAmES<br />

Another thing we wondered about early on was the ile names. they did<br />

not impart much information about what was in the ile, but they were all<br />

equally long. Again I suppose the reason, as for equally long document blocks,<br />

was hidden in the past. And again the y2K conversion brought with it ile<br />

names based on the CELEX document number, and consequently of different<br />

lengths.<br />

CONCLUSION<br />

Of course a lot has changed since the 1990s. first we had the y2K conversion.<br />

And now, just before I left Oslo for this meeting, we received updates<br />

where the documents were coded in XmL and we could fetch them ourselves<br />

with ftP. this is good news and an additional example of the excellent service<br />

and professionalism of the Publications Ofice.<br />

Even if I have permitted myself to highlight some examples of the curious<br />

things that happen in all computer operations, and which we have thus<br />

also experienced as a CELEX host, I cannot emphasise strongly enough the<br />

valuable service which the Publications Ofice has provided over all these<br />

years. this very professional service has not only been invaluable to the EU<br />

member countries, but also to semi-outsiders like Norway. I can only end by<br />

extending a heartfelt thanks to the Publications Ofice for its support and<br />

service all this time.<br />

And lastly, congratulations on your irst 25 years.<br />

70 | 71<br />

01_2007_5222_txt_ML.indd 71 6-12-2007 15:13:45

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