The library collection of the office falls into four principal categories:

• documents and publications of the Council of Europe;
• publications of the office;
• reference library;
• other resources (including unpublished texts and files).

Documents and publications of the Council of Europe
Most of the Council of Europe texts is written in two official languages: English and French. They are available subject to the information policy of the Organisation. In practice, most documents are publicly available immediately on their entry into force or publication; those documents which are classified or confidential are available under strictly defined archival procedures.

Documents are categorised based on the alphanumeric subject classification prepared by the Information and Documentation Section of the Council of Europe. The classification reflects the Organisationís areas of activity.

The main categories are the following:

A. References and generalities.
B. Conventions.
C. Proceedings and adopted texts (of the main bodies).
D. Political and institutional affairs. Democracy.
E. Human rights.
F. Media.
G. Social questions.
H. Education. Culture. Heritage. Sport.
I. Youth.
J. Health.
K. Environment.
L. Local democracy and regions.
M. Legal co-operation (including among others criminal law, penology, information technology, bioethics, constitutional law).

Since its inception, the office has been a deposit library of the Council of Europe. Its collection comprises over 8,000 unclassified documents and publications of the Organisation, and is the largest in Poland. The collection is updated regularly on a monthly basis; all new publications are immediately shelved and made available to the public. Although the collection could not be built retroactively, the library has all major documents of the main bodies of the Council of Europe: the Committee of Ministers, the Parliamentary Assembly, and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe.

The collection includes all the conventions of the Council of Europe published in the European Treaty Series and the multi-volume publication European Conventions and Agreements, as well as explanatory reports to conventions, published since 1965. Other texts adopted by the Committee of Ministers (recommendations, resolutions, communications from meetings) are published in the yearbook Texts adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The office's library stocks issues of this annual publication dating back to 1976.

The office has a full series of Texts adopted by the Assembly which features documents adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly (until 1974, Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe), and Adopted texts of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council Europe (previously the Standing Conference of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe), published since 1949 and 1957, respectively. The library has an extensive collection of working texts, reports, and minutes from sessions of these bodies.

Importantly, the library has full documentation of the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (Series A - Judgements and decisions, since 1991 - Reports of judgements and decisions) and the European Commission of Human Rights (Decisions and reports), as well as monographs, analyses, compilations, guidebooks, and auxiliary texts of the European Convention on Human Rights and on the European System of the Protection of Human Rights (including reports and recommendations of the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture, and the documentation of the European Social Charter).

Documents of other bodies of the Council of Europe, publications and series of texts related to the Council`s individual projects are compiled in a representative sample of all areas of activity (and consequently subject categories) of the Council of Europe.

In addition to documents issued by the Council of Europe, its bodies, commissions, and directorates, the library also stocks publications of the Council of Europe Publishing. These include documents, reports and monographs on issues of concern to the Organisation. Carefully edited and printed, these publications review the work of the Council of Europe in the given area over the past decades, including all basic documents. They are an important part of the resources of the Centre, collected since 1991.

A word is in place here about the availability of publications of the Council of Europe in Polish. Treaties are well available in Polish. Conventions ratified by Poland are published in the Journal of Laws (Dziennik Ustaw). However, few texts other than conventions, are available in Polish. In this context, it has always been a priority for the office, and part of the general information policy of the Council of Europe, to translate documents and publications of the Council of Europe into Polish. Some translations have been published in the Bulletin or the Council of Europe Documents series (see below), others are available in a hard copy or as a computer file.

The collection of documents and publications of the Council of Europe is arranged according to the cataloguing principles of the Council of Europe followed by the libraries of the Organisation and its central catalogue.
This part of the collection of the office has no catalogue of its own but bibliographic data can be found in the on-line catalogue of the libraries of the Council of Europe (WebCat) available on the Internet (http://lms.coe.int/uhtbin/webcat).

Publications of the office

The publications of the office include Bulletin, books, and the series of translations of Council of Europe documents. Information and educational work draws upon a range of brochures, leaflets, educational packages, manuals, and posters published by the office. All publications are available at the library, classified in the same way as Council of Europe texts.

The Bulletin of the Information Office on the Council of Europe in Warsaw has been published since 1992. Originally an information periodical, it has evolved to become a scientific and educational publication. The office usually publishes 4 issues per year. Members of the Editorial Board of the Bulletin and its contributors are scholars of Warsaw University and the Polish Academy of Sciences, as well as the representatives of public administration. The Bulletin is addressed to academics, lawyers, civil servants, and all those interested in European legal standards and European integration. Each issue is a monographic review, e.g. The Application of the European Union Legislation in the Internal Legal Order of the State, The European Social Charter, Education in the Era of Globalisation. In addition to articles, the Bulletin features translations of documents. Some of the issues are entirely devoted to the publication of the summaries of judgements of the European Court of Human Rights, drawn up in Polish by Marek A. Nowicki. In addition, full translations of judgements of the Court in Polish cases have been provided since 2000.

Books published by the office are original works commissioned by the office or Polish translations of Council of Europe publications. Particularly popular with readers are publications on the role of Poland in the work of the Council of Europe and publications on the European Court of Human Rights.

Since 1998, the publication of Polish summaries of judgements of the European Court of Human Rights has taken the form of books edited on a regular basis.

Successive issues of the Council of Europe Documents series, first published in 1991, include Polish translations of Council of Europe documents. Each issue is a monographic selection.

Reference library

In addition to the collection of texts and documents of the Council of Europe and publications of the office, the office also has a reference library of over 600 volumes on subjects related to all fields of the Council of Europeís activity. The reference library mainly comprises studies and compilations of documents on broadly defined human rights, equality, national minorities, European legal standards in various areas of social life, and European integration in general. Most books were published by leading European and Polish scholarly and legal publishers. Particularly important and popular are publications on the European Convention on Human Rights and its supervision mechanisms, as well as comparative studies on the universal and the regional systems of the protection of human rights.

The reference library is catalogued in a database managed with a MicroISIS software package. Publications can be identified by main elements of bibliographic description: name of the author or editor, title, series title, key words.

Other resources

Over a decade of its work, the office has produced translations of not only conventions but also other documents, including recommendations, resolutions, action plans, reports. Most of them are available in the Centreís library as hard copies or electronic files.

In addition to publications, the office also stocks rules and regulations of competitions and contests, application forms, including those of the European Court of Human Rights, and fact sheets compiled by the office.