ABSTRACT
An enormous and varied amount of information useful to social scientists is published by different branches of government. As well as Parliamentary debates, Green Papers, White Papers, Bills and Acts, government departments regularly issue reports and publish research. There are currently three main categories of official publication—parliamentary, non-parliamentary and non-HMSO. The first two categories, parliamentary and non-parliamentary, are both published by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. There are two online services which cover HMSO publications. British Official Publications is available on DIALOG. The database holds records from 1976 to the present, is updated monthly and, in February 1990, held approximately 130,000 records. The emergence of the third and last category of official publications—the non-HMSO or departmentally published material—can be said to date from the Government’s nationalization programme which started after the Second World War.
