Lifecycle of Parliamentary Documents: United Kingdom
for managing and implementing information management policies and provide guidance to staff and heads of teams to ensure that policies are met.[1]
Parliament has published an Information Management Policy that sets out “a baseline standard of good practice and compliance for application across the Houses’ wide variety of procedural and technical environments.”[2] It requires users to create and keep information enabling delivery of the Houses’ services and providing complete and accurate evidence of decisions taken. The information must be stored in a manner that makes it identifiable, accessible and retrievable at all times in its lifecycle. The guidance further provides that digital information is preferred and that hard copies of information will only be stored when “required for evidential, historical or legal purposes, or it is not practical, efficient or economical to digitise the originals.”[3]
II. The Role of the National or Parliamentary Library in the Parliamentary Document Process
A. British Library
The British Library, the national library of the United Kingdom, is an executive non-departmental public body.[4] Its mission is to make “intellectual heritage accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment.” [5] The British Library is a legal deposit library and every publication in the UK must be deposited with it within one calendar month of being published. Copies must also be provided on demand to the other legal deposit libraries in the UK.[6]
In 2013, the Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013 entered into force and makes works published in a medium other than print, such as websites and electronic publications, subject to legal deposit requirements. In cases where materials are published both in print and online, the default legal deposit remains with the print version, unless an agreement has been made between the British Library and the publisher.[7] From the start of the 2016-17 parliamentary session, an agreement was put in place for the British Library to collect and preserve digital copies in PDF format of all Command and House of Commons papers published on gov.uk, rather than the print copies.[8] The legal obligation to deposit a copy of all published materials applies to all publishers, and there are limited exceptions for the government and government organizations that publish their
- ↑ UK Parliament, Information Management Policy 3-4 (Nov. 2020), https://perma.cc/PS4T-34BY.
- ↑ Id. at 4.
- ↑ Id. at 6.
- ↑ British Library Act 1972, c. 54, https://perma.cc/54TP-M74Y.
- ↑ Governance, British Library, https://perma.cc/C4WF-JKBY.
- ↑ Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003, c. 28 § 14, https://perma.cc/Q3YF-LBGU.
- ↑ Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013, SI 2013/777 ¶ 14, https://perma.cc/L7BYYR8Q and Home, Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries, https://perma.cc/FQM4-DH3Y.
- ↑ Publishing Processes and Practices Standards for Web and Print Publishing, The National Archives, https://perma.cc/HTF7-NYUV.
The Law Library of Congress
