Parliaments and Assemblies of the British Isles: Proceedings of a One‐day Seminar ... 22 November 1999

Citation

Fraser, K.C. (2001), "Parliaments and Assemblies of the British Isles: Proceedings of a One‐day Seminar ... 22 November 1999", Library Review, Vol. 50 No. 3, pp. 146-159. https://doi.org/10.1108/lr.2001.50.3.146.2

A conference on government publications might not be everyone’s idea of a good day out, but I for one wish I had been present at the seminar (organised by SCOOP, the Library Association’s Standing Committee on Official Publications), the proceedings of which are printed in this volume. For the prosaic subject of official publications has, with the introduction of legislative devolution, now become much more complex and interesting. The conference papers summarise the publishing policies of the English and Scottish Parliaments, the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies, the Oireachteas of the Irish Republic, and the legislatures of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, together with a tentative piece on the London Assembly, then not yet elected. In spite of the diversity of these bodies, some common themes can be made out.

One instructive pursuit would be to compare the types of publication issued by each patliament and deduce how similar, or different, they are. In fact, the larger bodies turn out to produce fairly similar series, even in the Irish Republic where one might have thought that the heritage of Westminster would not have loomed as large as it does. The Channel Islands differ in not publishing verbatim parliamentary proceedings, as presumably it is less necessary where citizens can easily talk to a local legislator. It is particularly remarkable that, in newly devolved Scotland where, as Janet Seaton points out, there has been a general sentiment that we should “do things better than Westminster”, the result has been that nearly every series of English official publications now has a Scottish parallel. I may venture to mention my own contribution to that debate, a conference paper in 1997 (Fraser, 1998) in which, inter alia, I made two pleas for the coming Scottish Parliament to make life simpler for those seeking its publications. One was to include them all, whether issued by Parliament or Government, in a single bibliography – which has been done – and the second was to apply a straightforward and consistent numbering system to them – which has not been done: I have come across two recent and important Scottish Executive publications which lack (or at least do not display) S.E. numbers at all.

Another significant question is the extent to which printed publication may be superseded by online texts. There is a remarkable contrast between the Scottish Parliament, which is expected to produce about 1,500 printed items a year (not counting those of the Executive) as well as publishing them online, and the Welsh Assembly, which apparently intends to have no printed publications at all. Carew Fullerton explains that this controversial decision reflected the wish to save money from a fairly restricted budget, but other contributors have drawn attention (as I did in 1997) to problems such as how to satisfy citizens who have no access to the Internet, how to guarantee the authority of an easily variable electronic text, and, not least, the sheer difficulty of reading an extensive text online (Fullerton rather gives the game away here with the remark that “A lot of paper is generated, as everyone prints them”).

Alastair Allan, Chairman of SCOOP, rightly stresses in his concluding remarks that it is the duty of librarians to see that the public gets the information it wants, and that they should try to influence the various parliaments and governments to ensure that their publications meet that aim. These useful papers will certainly help towards that end, and I hope they will be read not only by librarians but also by the Civil Servants responsible for official publishing policy.