The Supreme Courts Library holds Scottish and English Law Commission papers, Scottish and UK statutes as well as an historic collection of official publications and reports relating to the Scottish civil and criminal justice system.
Thanks to Kayleigh Mcgarry for the update. More information can be found in the Directory entry here
GCU’s UK Official Publications collection is mainly papers of the UK Parliament in Westminster and the Scottish Parliament. They hold subscriptions to:
Thanks to Kimberly Bryce for the updated information. Please see the entry for full details
The Library holds extensive collections of UK and Scottish Parliamentary Publications. This includes House of Commons Papers and Bills, Command Papers, House of Lords Papers and Bills, House of Commons Parliamentary and Committee Debates, House of Lords Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons and House of Lords Journals and the Acts of Parliament. Scottish titles include Scottish Parliamentary Papers, The Official Report of the Scottish Parliament and all Parliamentary Committees, Bills and accompanying papers, Scottish Acts and the Scottish Executive/Government Papers. There are holdings of reports, policy documents and official statistics including Census documents from the UK and Scottish Governments.
Aberdeen University is a European Documentation Centre and receives copies of official publications from the European Union.
The collection includes publications from a wide range of international organisations including the United Nations, the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, The Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights.
Thanks to Alison Steed for the update. Full details are available on the Aberdeen University Library Directory page
The Advocates Library has a large collection of UK legislation, from Scottish Acts in Regiam Majestatem (published in 1597) and Acts of King Henry VIII (published in 1551) to the Acts of the Scottish Parliament / Public, General Acts available today. We also have Local, personal and private acts from 1798-. We hold a collection of UK Statutory Instruments not reprinted in publishers bound volumes and copies of Draft Statutory Instruments.
In addition to this UK Official Publications material we also have legislation from a large number of foreign jurisdictions during colonial periods, as well as some of more recent dates.
For information on accessing Advocates Library materials via the NLS reading rooms see our full entry in the Directory
The collection of Marine Scotland Science contains their own publications as well as Fisheries Research Services and Fishery Board for Scotland publications (previous names of Marine Scotland Science). These include sea fisheries statistics, Marine Research, Fishery Bulletin and annual reports of the Fishery Board of Scotland. It also includes copies of all reports published by the Marine or Freshwater Fisheries Laboratories. Publications from other bodies are collected where there is relevance to MSS’s work.
The collection is held at the Marine Laboratory in Aberdeen, with publications relating to freshwater held at the Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory near Pitlochry.
Thank you Helen McGregor for the update. Please see the Directory entry for full details
The SPICe collection contains Scottish Parliament publications (Hard copy of Sessions 1-4 only), Scottish Parliament Acts and Scottish Government publications
Thanks to Kathryn Appleby-Donald for the update. You can see the full entry here
The SASA collection contains publications by Science & Advice for Scottish Agriculture e.g. pesticide usage in Scotland surveys, pesticide poisoning of animals reports, annual reports. It also holds publications of other Scottish and UK bodies where relevant to SASA’s work e.g. DEFRA, Forestry Commission, Scottish Natural Heritage. Additionally it includes historical material from, for example, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries for Scotland (DAFS) and Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries & Food (MAFF).
Thanks to Jill Tivey for the update. For more details visit SASA’s entry in the SWOP Directory
| If you are resident in Scotland you can apply for a reader’s card online to gain access to this digital manuscript database covering 200 years of British history, from the reign of Henry VIII to the end of the reign of Queen Anne, describing both domestic and overseas activity and events. This resource contains over 3 million manuscript pages and over 500,000 fully searchable calendar and catalogue entries, with links between the two types of document when they are related. The resource also includes introductory essays, research tools, and an image library.
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If you haven’t been to the National Library of Scotland’s new premises at Kelvin Hall it is certainly worth a visit for the Moving Image archive alone.
However, as well as film, Kelvin Hall opens up access to ALL of the National Library of Scotland’s electronic legal deposit material. This includes journal articles, e-books and archived websites.
Content which the UK’s legal deposit libraries can harvest via the UK Web domain crawl includes millions of sites from the ‘.uk’ domain and a great many from other UK-based domans, such as ‘.scot’ or ‘.london’.
View and search UK content from the web using the Legal deposit UK Web Archive access tool available at the National Library of Scotland.
Social media content, such as from Twitter and Facebook, is part of the legislation, and therefore legal deposit libraries can collect them too.
Electronic legal deposit material is available via the main catalogue. For access to journal articles, choose the ‘e-articles (legal deposit)’ option from the ‘quick limits’ dropdown menu. Other legal deposit material is indicated by a prompt in the catalogue record for each item asking you to accept the legal deposit terms of access and use.
You dont need a library card to access all of these resources so just walk in and explore these resources for yourself.
There was a good turn out for our SWOP meeting at the Supreme Courts yesterday. We were delighted to welcome Alison Young from the Mitchell Library in Glasgow to the meeting as well as Kelly, Sarah Louise and Rebecaa from the library service for the Scottish Courts.
Attendees enjoyed a tour of the Courts’ buildings which included the original cells, now used for storage and the ‘piano store’ which as well as a piano housed a coffin!
Jennie Findlay, Scottish Courts Services Library Manager, was our guest chair and introduced Lord Carloway, Lord President of the Court of Session.
His speech reflected on the fact that the Scots Legal System is based upon principle and not precedent and whilst databases certainly aid research they must be used with caution and not replace research of core works and texts by legal greats. He has kindly made his speech availablefor those unable to attend yesterday.
SWOP Forum Talk – 19 June 2017
The minutes and reports from the meeting that followed will be available shortly.
The main work of the group is sharing our expertise and knowledge across many diverse areas of information work and digital literacy with a focus on government information. If you have any ideas or projects that you would like the group to take forward or work with us on please contact the SWOP Chair.
Newly published official publications from :
Image copyright: UK Parliament / Jessica Taylor
General Election 2017: results and analysis – “This briefing paper contains summary information about the results of the 2017 General Election, held on 8th June. It provides election results by party, nation and region, as well as further statistics on turnout and lost deposits.
The 2017 General Election resulted in a hung Parliament, with no party having an overall majority. The Conservative Party won the largest number of seats and votes, taking 317 seats and 42.3% of the UK vote, up from 36.8% in 2015. The Labour Party won 262 seats, and 40.0% of the vote, up from 232 seats and 30.4% of the vote in 2015. The Liberal Democrats won 12 seats, a net gain of 4 seats, and 7.4% of the UK vote.”
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The United Nations Digital Library (UNDL) is now available and can be accessed globally free of charge. A result of the successful collaboration between the Dag Hammarskjöld Library (DHL) at UN Headquarters and the United Nations Office at Geneva Library, the platform uses innovative open source technology to provide access to UN-produced materials in digital format. Content will be added continuously and enhancements to the system will be rolled out on a regular basis.
The new system, which offers easy access to UN documents, maps, speeches, voting data, as well as non-sales publications, will help global researchers find the UN information they need, quickly and accurately. It provides one point of access to UN information – current and historical.
Phase 1 of the UNDL incorporates digital content from the databases in UNBISnet and the Official Document System (ODS) – mainly official UN documents, speech and voting records, as well as some maps. The UNDL will also link to open access UN content.
What can I find in the United Nations Digital Library?
– UN documents and open access publications
– UN voting data, maps and speeches
– Content in 6+ languages
Which system features are there?
– Linked data between related documents such as resolutions, meeting records and voting
– Refine searches by UN body, agency or type of document
Promotional video and further information
The CILIP Government Information Group have arranged a visit to RBG on the 7th July 2017 3pm-4.30.
This visit is open to all SWOP colleagues.
The Library at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) houses Scotland’s national reference collection of botanical and horticultural resources with more than 70,000 books, the earliest of which date from the 15th century. During this visit, attendees will have the opportunity to view some of the treasures from the Library and Archive collections, many of which have never been on public exhibition.
The visit will last for 90 minutes and will include tea and coffee on arrival.
Sha
rron Wilson recently chatted with her Advocates Library colleague David Brown about the role of Professional Groups. David is a Committee Member from the Scottish Law Librarians Group (SLLG). This is what David had to say…….
CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR ROLE?
I am the Senior Bibliographic Services Assistant. I’ve worked for the Faculty of Advocates for 14 years: beginning as a book cleaner, then as a support assistant (loose-leaf updating and shelving) in my first year. I really enjoy my current post and working in the library.
My main responsibilities are:
Like most law librarians I find myself involved in various functions of the library: from regular covering of the enquiry service through to helping move cabinets and setting up exhibitions. The work of a law librarian involves a surprising amount of physicality and screwdrivers. ‘101 uses for library pliers’ would be a very handy module on the post-graduate course.
I am also a member of the Scottish Law Librarians Group and have been a committee member since 2011.
WHAT IS THE SCOTTISH LAW LIBRARIANS GROUP?
The Scottish Law Librarians Group, commonly known by the abbreviation SLLG, is a group which represents the interests of Scots law library and information professionals and anyone who handles Scots law information.
The group is self-funding through a modest membership subscription. It delivers a vocational platform for members to interact, have access to training opportunities and to be, most importantly, peer-supported in their professional sector and wider career.
The SLLG has embraced Twitter (@scotlawlibs), blogging (https://sllgblog.wordpress.com/) and has a website (www.sllg.org.uk) with a members’ section for discussions. It’s not got with the Instagram kids quite yet, though.
The SLLG traditionally tries to put on a minimum of 3 events a year (often there are more) as a mix of training, current awareness networking and visits.
WHAT CHALLENGES ARE AHEAD FOR THE SLLG?
The main challenge for the SLLG is always the same: to continue. Law information professionals need specialist groups such as the SLLG to exist for them.
As a community group, the SLLG is only worth how much its members find it worthwhile. It is the membership that moulds the group into their own image. It is in our nature, if we are fortunate enough, to help others. The SLLG has the perfect attributes within it to accomplish this.
In the early 2000s, the SLLG was made up of around 100 members. Sadly there is no getting away from the law information professional sector as one under a number of pressures right now. This has been reflected by the SLLG in reduced membership and related topics raised at recent networking events. The committee, also, has faced a harder role in these times to provide value for money events.
In the past year the SLLG has successfully adapted in many respects to the new climate where everyone’s resources are precious.
The introduction of Short Skills, Networking and Presentation events (called, cutely, SSNaP Chats) have been revelatory. The idea came from enabling the extremely capable skillset of the membership to be shared as a form of in-house knowledge.
SSNaPs allow members to freely share, workshop and explore services and particular skills with other members with little formality and lots of flexibility. The committee becomes a conduit rather than organiser for these events to go ahead. SSNaP chats have proved very popular to both attend and run.
Of course, there are still the social aspects of the group and library visits to enjoy.
I see the main challenge for law information professionals to be in promoting themselves as professionally equal to their service users. It is vital to get across the continued professional development, experience and, above all, expertise of the law librarian.
It’s all very well for law information professionals saying lawyers will miss their qualities if they are removed. Unless lawyers know what was there in the first place, how will they know where to look for what’s missing?
I am a true believer that our little corner of the information profession requires an engaged SLLG. Our sector is a small world; capable of cruelty, no doubt about it, and having an organisation which brings us together positively is essential.
CAN SWOP AND THE SLLG COLLABORATE?
SWOP and SLLG can learn a lot from one another.
Ultimately it’s up to those with interests to connect with the potential held within these groups. I think this is something SWOP is very good at and the SLLG can take note of.
I was fortunate to be invited to attend a SWOP meeting because I was interested in the very positive developments of SWOP. SWOP is a great open networking group. I was impressed at the wide spectrum of backgrounds of those with an interest in what can be arguably seen as the niche workings of Official Publications. SWOP has done really well to harness this asset and find momentum from it.
SWOP and SLLG have a cross-over of members, which makes occasionally working together for a mutual benefit easy to consider.
I feel there is scope for both memberships to think where SWOP or the SLLG would be best placed to offer the other learning, blog posting or interest opportunities. Those dual members are crucial to charting this.
I’ve noticed recently that SWOP have run a few events based around law subjects and have visited law libraries. Last year SLLG hosted a talk about the parliamentary legislative process.
SWOP members might well see the worth in learning more about the law information sector. The SLLG would be ideally placed to facilitate this for SWOP whilst still benefiting SLLG members not in SWOP. Likewise, SLLG members could very much benefit from discussing official publications and projects with SWOP members.
Groups like ours can make such a constructive impact to their members’ work life it makes sense to support one another when there is an opportunity.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO SOMEONE THINKING ABOUT JOINING THE SLLG?
You won’t be disappointed – just sign here!
Or the long answer: if our interests match some of your own, look around the website, get in touch with someone on the committee or ask to come to one of our events and see what you think of us. I’m confident you’ll find us a lovely group.
