Official publications (Off Pubs) are documents published by parliament, government or other official organisations.
Official publications typically refer to documents published by a national organisation e.g. Parliament and Government, but can also include local and regional organisations, and international or intragovernmental organisations e.g. European Union or United Nations.
Official publications may include press releases, annual reports, official journals/gazettes, reports and statistics, policy documents, briefing papers, consultation papers, command papers, draft legislation (Bills), final legislation (Acts), committee reports, parliamentary debates (Hansard), and parliamentary votes.
The library's official publications and statistical collections are available on Floor 4 of the library. Our collections are largely closed (historic) because official publications are now published on parliament and government websites under Open Gov licenses.
All UK official publications start with the classification number 41, with parliamentary publications at 41M, governmental publications at 41N, and law publications at 41P. Statistical publications are arranged by geographical area (INT = International, 4 = Europe, 41 = UK, 5 = Asia, 6 = Africa, 7 = North America, 8 = South America, and 9 = Oceania) and subject.
Use Google's Advanced Search to find documents from a particular date range, region, website or domain name. To access the Advanced Search, click on the cog in the the results list.
Internet Archive:
Wayback Machine
Access 770 billion archived internet documents and websites from 1996 onwards. Either search the Wayback Machine, add an extension to your internet browser, or install the app on your mobile device.
