Eurofound is an official European Union (EU) body which defines its role as a provider of "information, advice and expertise – on living and working conditions, industrial relations and managing change in Europe – for key actors in the field of EU social policy on the basis of comparative information, research and analysis." It will quickly be seen that this statement potentially covers an enormous amount of ground, and in fact this potential is realised. This is to the advantage of researchers, as Eurofound is a site from which it is possible to glean a great deal of information on social and economic life, both regionally and for individual countries.
Eurofound is in fact an umbrella name for the work of three related bodies, EIRO (European Industrial Relations Observatory); EMCC (European Monitoring Centre on Change); and EWCO (European Working Conditions Observatory). Tabs for their individual sites are conveniently provided on the Eurofound homepage -- a helpful way into information and the latest findings on particular spheres of social or working life.
A more granular level of searching is provided by Areas of Expertise. This channels documents into 18 key categories, amongst them Business and society; Gender; Health; and Work-life balance.
Publications provides full-text access to items in the various Member State languages. Besides language, these can be searched by date, subject or author. The Publications by language page is slightly anomalous, as English is not on the list. This is apparently because all Eurofound publications are in English in any case. However, under Advanced Search it is possible to search in every language including English, although this search mode initially has to be accessed via Basic Search. Apart from all the usual refinements that would be expected in an Advanced Search, Sector restricts searches to particular fields of work (e.g. Agriculture and Fishing, Metal and Machinery, etc.), while Country, along with Member States, can also isolate information on European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries, the USA and Japan.
It should be added that all the categories of documents have archives of several years’ duration, with Reports going back as far as 1997. It is somewhat puzzling to find titles listed under one year with descriptions indicating that they were published one or even several years later. Presumably, the later date refers to when the document was actually printed or placed on the site. From internal evidence, the examples I looked at did appear to have been listed in the correct year.
One other important area of the site is the European industrial relations dictionary. “Dictionary” is actually something of a misnomer, as many of the entries are of a quality and depth that would befit an encyclopedia -- such as these entries on Discrimination and equality in Employment law and The legal framework (i.e. for employment and industrial relations) are typical. Excellent use of hyperlinks provide an added level of usefulness to the dictionary, in particular to the text of relevant EU law.
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
