SCOOP: Standing Committee on Official Publications · meeting, Clare has accepted the invitation]. Dora offered to circulate a set of links to useful documents published by Parliament

SCOOP Minutes 09/01/2013

1

SCOOP: Standing Committee on Official Publications

Minutes for meeting held on 9 January 2013, 2.00pm, CILIP HQ

Present:

Andrew Coburn (Chair), Chris Pond (Vice-Chair), Peter Chapman (Secretary), Patrick Casey

(BL), Dora Clark (House of Commons), Peter Gutteridge (TSO), Alastair Allan (Past- Chairman,

. Co-opted), Graeme Paterson (TNA), Maria Bell (EIA), Hannah Chandler (Bodleian), Michael

Oakes (ELG), Steven Hartshone (Bolton Libraries Museums and Archives, co-opted), David

Smith (GIG),

Pre-Agenda presentation

Peter Chapman updated the meeting at the half-way point of the SCOOP Project – Print Still Matters. His presentation, and a list of specialists contacted to date, is attached to these minutes. The Project will be completed by the end of March and a full presentation with report will be given at the May meeting of SCOOP. ACTION: PC In the meantime, any SCOOP member who has a significant PRINT collection of Official Publications and who has not been contacted by Peter is asked to contact him asap ([email protected]). Access to the Google site which has been created for the Project is available to any SCOOP member on application to Peter. 72/1 Apologies and Welcomes

Apologies were received from:

Jane Inman, Valerie Nurcombe, Helen Creeke, Emma Francis, Gavin Boughton, Fiona

McParland, Deidre Farry, Eveleen Rooney, Christoph Schmidt-Supprian

It was noted that this was to be Chris Pond’s final meeting of SCOOP. The Chair thanked

Chris for his long service to SCOOP and presented him with a certificate to mark the end of

his active involvement (Chris will remain on the SCOOP mailing list for the time being).

Action Points – discussion

72/1: Pre-Agenda presentation by Edward Wood) / Post-Agenda presentation by Louise Russell 72/1/1 Dora Clark referred to her note which had been circulated in December (attached to the end of the minutes). All the in-bound link addresses remained the same. Search was being worked on. She will provide an update in May. Action: DC

mailto:[email protected]


2

72/1/2 Hansard on non-Parliamentary databases – Hannah Chandler reported that coverage from 1800-2005 was available on the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers database which was available to academic libraries. From 2005/6, material was carried on the JUSTIS database. Alastair Allan pointed out that the quality of the scanning, especially of tables, was variable. 72/1/3 Parliamentary Outreach Team – Dora Clark updated the note sent to SCOOP by Christopher Blanchett (attached to end of minutes). The Outreach Team is still working on making Parliament accessible to the public through libraries. She suggested that Clare Cowan, Head of the Team, be invited to the next meeting Action: DC [subsequent to the meeting, Clare has accepted the invitation]. Dora offered to circulate a set of links to useful documents published by Parliament Action: DC [subsequent to the meeting, these links have been circulated] Dora suggested that the Outreach Team might be offering training in accessing Parliamentary Information in the future. 72/1/4 Update on Gov.UK – it was noted that gov.uk was up and running but that few departments were fully represented on it. Alastair Allan highlighted many of the weaknesses of the approach undertaken by the gov.uk team and wondered whether all government bodies would be taken on board. Graeme Paterson said that TNA had a list of ‘exempt’ bodies. 72/2: Paper archive of government documents

72/2/1 AAto begin’s disposal guidelines (attached to the minutes) were accepted and he

was thanked for his work. The Chair suggested that SCL / SCONUL be approached to

publicise the availability of these Guidelines Action: Chair

Alastair will produce further draft guidelines for the May meeting Action: AA

72/2/2 Use of Marc Tag 583 to aid retention and preservation The Chair gave an update on the Copac Collection Management Tools Project noting that further work was being undertaken in 2013. He will keep a watching brief and will ensure that the usefulness of the Project to collections of Official Publications is fed back to the Project team Action: Chair

72/3: Availability of government documents

The Chair had talked to Guy Daines of CILIP about the legal deposit responsibility of

Government Depts but had been asked for further information on SCOOP’s concerns.

Anyone who has specific concerns should contact the Chair. Action: ALL


3

72/4: Online training opportunities

Chair updated the meeting on CILIP’s progress with its new web provision. A VLE is included

but it is low on the priorities of the CILIP implementation team. He will continue to keep in

contact with them. Action: Chair

72/5: Access to Official Statistics

72/5/1 The Chair continues to liaise with CILIP on possible names for the CILIP

representative to the Statistics Users Forum. Action: Chair

72/5/2 Alastair Allan continues to plan the proposed seminar which will be held later in

2013. Action: AA

72/6 Report by the Chair / Secretary

72/6/1 It was agreed that Anni Berman (Hertfordshire) is welcome to be a member of

SCOOP (she sent apologies for not being able to be present) Action: Secretary

72/6/2 Still waiting on a nomination from ARLG Action: Secretary

72/6/3 No nomination had been made to CILIP for the post of IFLA Rep.

72/6/4 SCL/ ACE Public Library Information Offer project /

http://www.bookmarkyourlibrary.org.uk/

The Chair spoke to a note which he had circulated about the Project and the beta version of

the web site which had been drawn to his attention. The Secretary highlighted the response

of Alan Wylie to the site – both background papers attached to the minutes.

Much discussion centred on how the public libraries were to fulfil the role promised by the

Project at a time of cutbacks in both staff and training. It was agreed that the Chair contact

the Project to:

Offer guidance on the Skills Audit in relation to knowledge of Official Publications

Offer SCOOP’s expertise in developing the Project in relation to training in Official

Publications enquiries

Invite the Project Chair to a future SCOOP meeting Action: Chair

72/6/5 ALCTS eForum - Government Information: Now and in the Future – the Secretary

drew attention to the eForum of which he had a full record. Key points from it would be

added to the SCOOP Project web site.

Action: Secretary

http://www.bookmarkyourlibrary.org.uk/


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72/7: Reports from representatives.

72/7/a TSO

Report attached. An email was sent before Christmas to a number of public libraries concerning

the provision of gratis subscriptions to the printed versions of the Belfast, Edinburgh and London

gazettes. Public Libraries have been offered a gratis subscription to OPO enabling access to these

publications electronically.

72/7/b The National Archives

The Seminar for BIALL on the 7th Nov. had gone very well. 72/7/c Parliament

Parliamentary Outreach staff will be doing a course about getting the best out of the

parliament website at CILIP on Wed 26 June.

There will be an Open Day for the House of Commons Library on 20th February 2013.

72/7/d EIA (Maria Bell)

Report attached. Maria will continue to monitor EU matters on behalf of SCOOP.

72/7/e BL (Patrick Casey)

Report attached. Patrick suggested that SCOOP might welcome a presentation on e-deposit

once the system had settled down at the BL. It was agreed that the September meeting

might be a good time for such a presentation. Action: Patrick

Patrick highlighted the successful launch of the Social Welfare portal

Jennie Grimshaw is developing the BL’s content strategy for Official Publications and would

welcome SCOOP comments – the strategy has been circulated with the request to please

keep with the SCOOP ‘family’.

Patrick is keeping a watching brief on developments in the deposit of UN publications in

print – an issue that concerns Hannah Chandler and Maria Bell as well.

72/7/f National Library of Wales (Rob Phillips)

No report


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72/7/g Refer (Peter Chapman)

The Autumn 2012 issue contained an article on SWOP. Chris Pond had highlighted an historic article on Local SIs which had been circulated to SCOOP members . Both the ISG (monthly) e-bulletin and REFER can be made available to SCOOP members electronically if required. 72/7/h SWOP

Report attached

72/7/i SUF

No report

72/8 MINUTES OF MEETING HELD ON 9 May 2012

Agreed (and subsequently posted on SCOOP site)

It was agreed that SWOP could circulate the draft minutes to members so long as the

minutes were not placed on the Knowledge Hub.

72/9 MATTERS ARISING

(67/12/1) – Jane Inman continues to update the Guidelines. They will be published by

SCOOP this time on our web site and in PDF. They are still on the NFER website.

ACTION: Jane Inman

72/10 AOB

It was agreed that the concept of a ‘corresponding’ member was no longer relevant (unless

a SCOOP member so wished to be described).

CILIP Update – items were suggested.

Action: Secretary (Update reporter has been notified of three items)

David Smith drew attention to the work of the Open Data Group in making Government

data more accessible to commercial and other bodies who wish to use and exploit this data.

Joy Caisley had circulated a Lis-law job advert (attached) from a Government Department. 72/11 DATE of NEXT MEETING

8th May 2013 2pm at CILIP HQ


6

It has been suggested by Jane Inman that in 2014 the SCOOP meeting dates should be

changed. It was agree that SCOOP would meet on the first Wednesday in February, May,

and September in 2014 as a trial. Action: Secretary


7

PDF of Pre-Agenda presentation


8

PDF of Official Publications specialists contacted for SCOOP Project


9

72/1/1 – December 2012 note from Dora Clark on Historic Hansard

The urgent move of the Historic Hansard website to a new hosting service in October 2012, was completed on target and site testing indicates that the content migration was successful. The web address and site structure on the new website has remained the same, and redirects are in place - this is certainly working well for us, please let me know if any of you are aware of problems accessing the data. The search function is still temporarily unavailable, but our developers are currently working on restoring a search service as a matter of priority; tests are going well and we aim to introduce it to the Parliament website within the next two months. Apologies for the inconvenience this is causing, especially to those of you who don't have access to the printed volumes. 72/1/3 - Parliamentary Outreach Team I was set a project by my head of section to look into the possibility of Parliamentary

Outreach forging closer links with public libraries. The initial work was research to see what

demand and interest there was from libraries across the UK.

The response was mixed and I have a set out a short note outlining some of the responses.

The intelligence gleaned from these approaches to the sector has been enormously helpful in

ensuring that the Public Information Office is supplying the information the public would like.

Circulated are the notes for reference.

I hope the meeting goes well on Wednesday.

Best regards

Chris Blanchett - Parliamentary Outreach Officer

72/2/1 – Relegating Legislation


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72/2/1 – Relegating Legislation


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72/6/4 - SCL/ ACE Public Library Information Offer project

Response from Alan Wylie below


12

I might not be able to make the meeting tomorrow due to our chronic staffing situation so

here are my comments on the PLIO;

Firstly I think that this initiative is a very positive and constructive one, anything that seeks

to develop and promote the information role of libraries and library staff is a good thing.

However I wish they had done it sooner and used it to argue for the retention of library

services and funding!

in section 2;

· enhance the role of libraries as trusted information, advice and guidance hubs in their

local communities - the use of the word advice concerns me here, library staff are not

trained advisers! If they mean referring users to suitable sources of advice then that's fine

but more than that could be very problematic!

· enhance the role of libraries in supporting customers to develop skills and confidence

in accessing and using digital information resources and undertaking online transactions -

it's the 'undertaking online transactions' bit that needs clarification, does this include

financial ones and if so public library IT set ups are not always very secure and staff

shouldn't be, in my view, expected to undertake these transactions on behalf of the public,

which is what the public often expect, due to accusations of fraud, confidentiality etc. this

really does need to be discussed further.

3.2 Four priority information areas were identified:

· Careers and job seeking: users reported difficulties using websites, creating CVs and

filling in online application forms - time and staffing constraints on the front line are going to

make this very difficult to deliver, in reality most library staff are under great pressure to

provide even basic ICT support and users are usually limited in the time they can access a pc

and some authorities have started charging which will restrict jobseekers even more from

using the facilities.

In section 4 it talks of the

"trust that citizens put in information accessed through libraries, mediated by library staff."

Do they put the same amount of trust in dealing with volunteers?

The information and guidance that users seek might be of a confidential and sensitive

nature, dealing with enquiries of this nature not only takes a good deal of common sense

but also training, experience and a sense of duty and ethos! I’m not saying that all

volunteers would be incapable of handling this but it is a serious issue!

· In section 7 it states that “staff are experts in handling information” – I would love this

to be true but sadly in my experience, and I do train library staff in enquiry handling, the


13

picture is very patchy. In most branch libraries information is not usually seen as a priority

and enquiries are quite often just pushed to the Reference Staff, if you are lucky enough to

have any? Which raises another concern, the loss of specialist Reference and Information

staff and the downgrading of Reference and Info services, this is obviously going to have a

detrimental effect on the quality and level of service offered and the amount of in house

training and sharing of good practice that takes place!

As for the ‘Bookmark’ website, my first impressions are that it looks amateurish and that the

homepage is badly designed and messy! The picture of the little girl masks the welcome

message, you can’t see or read it properly! (although the same message in black can be

easily seen underneath, duplication?) When I tried to use the ‘find a library’ search function

it just kept saying searching and then timed out, but then that might be linked to my local

server? I don’t want to be too critical as I think it’s a great idea and will surely improve and

develop?

Thanks

Alan Wylie

Reference Librarian

Islington


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72/7/a TSO official publishing activity During the period 1 September to 31 December 2012 we published over 2400 official publications including: Parliamentary and statutory

87 Command papers

87 House of Commons papers

56 House of Lords papers

67 House of Commons bills/ENs

169 House of Lords bills/ENs

117 Hansards

26 Primary legislation publications

1310 Secondary legislation publications (of which 612 were local non-print instruments)

225 gazettes (including New Year Honours)

94 Northern Ireland Assembly publications Non-Parliamentary

214 non-Parliamentary official publications Official Publications Online (OPO)

An email was sent before Christmas to a number of public libraries concerning the cessation at the end of January 2013 of free subscriptions to the printed versions of the Belfast, Edinburgh and London gazettes. Instead they can have a free subscription to OPO enabling access to these publications, or they can take out a priced subscription to the printed versions. To date we have received few replies!

Notable publications Public general acts and General Synod measures 2011 Acts of the Scottish Parliament 2011 Chronological table of the statutes 1235 -2011 Autumn statement 2013 Good clinical practice guide [for MHRA] The report of the Patrick Finucane review First report of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards New editions of Driving Standards Agency titles Peter Gutteridge 7 January 2012


15

72/7/d European information update: January 2013

Maria Bell, EDC Librarian, Library, London School of Economics

The European Information Association sadly ceased in December 2012. Publications are still available from the EIA website.

Keeping up to date and networking

Eurotalk - The discussion list will continue in order to maintain a forum for EU information related queries. You can also join the Eurotalk discussion list - Please visit https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=EUROTALK and

choose the ‘Subscribe or Unsubscribe’ option).

Info-Europa – weekly bulletin from the London Office of the European Commission is now publishing again. It is compiled by Eric Davies of Eurojargon Enterprises and Patrick Overy of Exeter University Library. Subscribe to the mailing list to receive the bulletin at: http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/information/info-europa/info-europa_en.htm

Linkedin Group – EU information in the UK – set up by the London Office of the European Commission

Eurojargon http://www.eurojargon.eu glossary of EU terminology from Eric Davies and Paul Clarke. Also Eric Davies is presenting EU information using Rebelmouse.com

EU Bulletin from Justis Publishing – keep up to date with latest legislation, proposals and cases. http://www.justis.com/data-coverage/eu-bulletins.aspx?date=latest

Follow on Twitter: @eubulletin – Justis EU Bulletin

@eurojargon – from Eric Davies of Eurojargon Enterprises http://www.eurojargon.eu

@eulondonrep – European Commission London office http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/

@BLIntOrgs – British Library IGO team

EUR-Lex is changing this year You can request access to the new EUR-Lex and be part of the test panel.

http://surveys.publications.europa.eu/formserver/PO/EURLEX/eurlex_newsletter_en.html

EU grey literature: Long-term preservation, access, and discovery A Eurolib working group on EU grey literature was set up in 2010. This first Eurolib Working Paper presents the major findings and recommendations issued after a detailed analysis. http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/EN/publications/20720.aspx

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=EUROTALK

http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/information/info-europa/info-europa_en.htm

http://www.eurojargon.eu/

http://www.justis.com/data-coverage/eu-bulletins.aspx?date=latest

http://www.eurojargon.eu/

http://ec.europa.eu/unitedkingdom/

http://surveys.publications.europa.eu/formserver/PO/EURLEX/eurlex_newsletter_en.html

http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/EN/publications/20720.aspx


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Research – The European University Institute in Florence http://www.eui.eu/Home.aspx has produced a new quarterly publication highlighting the research being undertaken there. - EUI Times http://times.eui.eu

EUROPP blog – European Politics and Policy blog from LSE http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/ The blog is run by members of the LSE Public Policy Group (PPG), which is part of the LSE Department of Government.

72/7/e British Library Report

Electoral Registers

The BL/Findmypast.co.uk project to digitize the 1832-1932 electoral registers held on

microfilm may be extended to include the BL’s hard copy registers. The programme for

digital scanning from the printed originals has been deferred until 2013/14. The launch date

for the collection of digitized electoral registers on microfilm remains spring 2013.

Regulations on E-Legal Deposit

The e-legal deposit regulations look set to be in place by April 2013. The process of

switching from print to e-legal deposit will be evolutionary not revolutionary, with case-by-

case negotiations with aggregators and publishers. The BL is investigating how we will

‘harvest’ material, both free and fee-based, behind passwords and paywalls. Publishers will

have the choice of giving the BL passwords to enable harvesting or ‘pushing’ material via a

portal.

Publishers will have the choice of depositing print or electronic copy, but will not be obliged

to send both.

As regards archiving the free UK web, staff will be asked to provide lists of URLs to ensure

that all important sites are being covered in depth by a domain crawl. Due to cost, the crawl

will take place at most twice a year and will cover all sites in the UK web space. The Social

Sciences Official Publications Team will be compiling lists of URLs of central and local

government and NHS web sites.

The forthcoming Health and Social Care Act 2012 reforms are being used as a trial. The

websites of the NHS primary care trusts and Strategic Health Authorities that are being

abolished this April will be archived and will be presented as a discrete collection together

with the newly created clinical commissioning groups, etc., that are replacing them. This

dataset, like all other electronic materials acquired under legal deposit, will only be available

in the legal deposit libraries’ reading rooms.

http://www.eui.eu/Home.aspx

http://times.eui.eu/

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/


17

Remote access to rights-cleared documents, including official materials, will continue to be

provided through subject-based portals, such as the Management and Business Studies

Portal, the Social Welfare Portal and the forthcoming Environmental Studies portal.

Social Welfare Portal http://socialwelfare.bl.uk/

The Social Welfare portal, which indexes reports, articles, consultation papers, etc., on

health, education, housing, work & pensions, social policy, etc., was launched on 7

December 2012.

The portal is aimed particularly at researchers outside of HE, social work students, managers

and practitioners. It contains lots of official publications, so please take a look and any

critical feedback is welcomed. Jennie Grimshaw has written an article on the portal for the

next issue of ‘Refer’.

EU Bookshop

The British Library is working with the EU Bookshop on a project to add their amended

MARC monograph records to the BL catalogue. Readers searching Explore the British Library

will be able to open a PDF of the item on the EU Bookshop website. Agreement has been

reached and these records should appear on our catalogue by spring 2013.

Content Strategy

The British Library is reviewing its Content Strategy, including that for official publications.

This includes ‘collecting and connecting’ activities (the latter described as linking to third-

party material using a variety of methods, such as licensing content, linking to freely

available content, and ingest of metadata). A general overview of the new Content Strategy

should appear on our website in spring 2013.

Jennie Grimshaw, Lead Curator for Social Policy & Official Publications, has written the draft

Official Publications strategy. Once agreed with line management she will be happy to send

this to SCOOP members either for individuals to comment and/or SCOOP to comment as a

body.

United Nations

The UN Dag Hammarskjöld Library has stated that from January 2013 depository libraries

will be sent a reduced print deposit collection, consisting of a core of the Official Records of

the General Assembly, Security Council and Economic and Social Council plus print

publications and periodicals. As the national library the British Library will continue to

receive as complete a print collection as is available.

It has also stated that they are developing a priced ‘United Nations eCollection’, possibly to

be launched winter 2013/14, though it is not clear what this will be and how it will relate to

the free Official Documents System.

http://socialwelfare.bl.uk/


18

Patrick Casey

8 January 2013

72/7/h SWOP Report for SCOOP Meeting 9th January 2013

The SWOP AGM was held on Edinburgh on the 21st November 2012

Presentations;

Peter Chapman Presented on the ‘Print Still Matters’ project

Lesley Stewart from the Scottish Government’s Digital Strategy Programme

presented on the key priorities for Scotland’s Digital Future

Angus McWilliam and Fiona McParland presented on eBooks and the reader

experience of ereading

SWOP Activities

Knowledge Hub

After looking into various options to keep members in touch with each other SWOP have

been using the ‘Knowledge Hub’ https://knowledgehub.local.gov.uk/ as a means of keeping

in touch between meetings and for sharing useful information.

This has got off to a good start mainly due to the efforts of Fiona Laing at the NLS and many

thanks to her for that.

It will only be successful if we can encourage as wide a range of members as possible

Any SCOOP member is welcome to join the SWOP group by registering at

https://knowledgehub.local.gov.uk/register

We can then share information across both groups.

Job shadowing initiative and programme of events and visits

To date there have been three successful visits organised to Historic Scotland, the Library of the Faculty of Advocates and the Scottish Government and we plan to continue offering visits to other member institutions throughout 2013 as the feedback has been very positive. We hope to initiate the job shadowing/job swapping initiative in 2013. We are having discussions with CILIPS Career Development Group who are also looking at establishing a database of similar opportunities. SWOP Office Bearers

At the last AGM in November 2012, Swop office bearers agreed to remain in post for a

further year until the next AGM in November 2013

https://knowledgehub.local.gov.uk/

https://knowledgehub.local.gov.uk/register


19

SWOP Date of next meeting

The next SWOP meeting will take place in Edinburgh on Wednesday 27th February

2013. It is hoped that the theme will be looking at European matters.

More details will be confirmed in due course including the venue and time of the

meeting.

All SCOOP members are very welcome to attend. Details of the agenda will follow in

due course.

Kind regards,

Fiona McParland

SWOP Chair