Carlo Marzocchi – Head of Sector, Library & Information Service: “The Council of the European Union is the European Union institution where the Member States’ ministers responsible for specific areas (e.g. finance, health, education) meet to discuss issues of common concern within their countries. The European Council consists of the Heads of State, or Government, of the Member States, together with the President of the Council and the President of the Commission. The European Council provides the Union with the necessary impetus for its development and defines its general political directions and priorities. It does not exercise legislative functions. The administrative support to both institutions is ensured by the General Secretariat of the Council or GSC. The Central Library identifies and makes available to GSC staff a variety of information resources relevant to GSC core activities, in all 23 working languages of the European Union. Besides paper-based collections available in the reading room or through loans, the Central Library, together with the GSC’s Legal Library and Language Library, selects and delivers a variety of online resources that can be accessed by all GSC staff, generally from within GSC premises. The Central Library holds over 100,000 monographs and EU publications. Newspapers and periodicals from EU Member States are available in the reading room. The Official Journal of the European Communities is available on paper, on microfiche (until 1997), on CD-ROM (from 1998 on) and via internet.” [via Helene LeBlanc]