From April 2016 Dandy have continued to publish all House of Lords Papers, Bills and Hansard, a service not offered by any other publisher. Dandy believe print still has an important role in library collections. Let’s consider the recent Iraq Inquiry (also referred to as the Chilcot Inquiry) a twelve volume set published as HC 265, the Inquiry was announced in 2009 and was seven years in the making. This report should be available in academic and public libraries in hard copy.
Dandy also believe in digital supply and the need to make official information easily accessible. Dandy offer through Public Information Online (PIO)* an excellent platform and search interface to over 100,000 parliamentary and government publications from the UK Parliament and devolved assemblies dating comprehensively from 2006/07 with the archive of certain titles going back to the 1950s. The very latest publications are available on PIO as it is updated on an hourly basis. Subscribers to PIO are entitled to a daily feed of information and Dandy also supply a weekly list of everything they publish.
Dandy gather together information, for example, all the pieces of evidence presented to Select Committees and provide them in a consistent consolidated pdf. Whilst the Select Committees do have freely available public websites many are not friendly in the way they provide the evidence. The evidence is an important part and many inquirers are more interested in the evidence than in the final report. A recent example of this is:
Science and Technology Committee 6th Report. Evidence Check: Smart metering of electricity and gas Volume 2. Oral and Written evidence
This is available as one consolidated pdf on Public Information Online. However, please see the Parliament website:
As you can see the Written Evidence is in 45 separate pdfs.
Additionally Dandy consolidate non parliamentary key titles from departments like Office for National Statistics (ONS) Ministry of Justice (MOJ), Ministry of Defence (MOD), Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC), examples being Construction Statistics 2016, Digest of United Kingdom energy statistics 2016, Offender Management Caseload Statistics 2015, Defence Statistics, Environmental Accounts etc. Please see all the data tables associated with Environmental Accounts:
Each data set contains multiple spreadsheets. We provide a 440 page print copy or fully searchable pdf, please note everything we publish appears on our PIO Shop to purchase as print copies:
http://www.publicinformationonline.com/shop/
Dandy have also been working with the University of Kent, digitising their collection and making them available via the PIO database. The archive currently includes:
- Army List 1969-2014
- Air Force List 1970-2013
- Annual Abstract of Statistics 1935-2014
- Civil Service Yearbook 1960-2015
- HMSO Annual Catalogues – 1922-1996
- Navy List 1974-2014
Additionally, Dandy have digitised all House of Lords Papers/Bills, Command Papers, PGAs going back to 1955. Dandy are currently digitising all Lords Papers/Bills from 1901-1955 – please note these papers are unavailable anywhere else.
The University of Kent view PIO as a reliable digital repository so are now discarding material that has been digitised – please see their statement:
At Kent we have been engaged in a review of our official publications collection and have been investigating ways to improve access to these materials whilst at the same time looking to save space for materials that are relatively low use in print form.
Working in partnership with Dandy Booksellers we have donated some of our archive of House of Commons, Lords, Command Papers and Standing Committee Debates in order that they can be scanned and made available to us electronically. These materials will be added to the Public Information Online (PIO) platform which has major implications for discoverability and storage as they will be rendered easily accessible via our resource discovery layer.
Mindful that any digitisation work would need to meet digital preservation criteria we worked with Dandy to ensure that the digital alternatives created were of a high enough standard to allow us to reconsider our print holdings. We are delighted with the quality of the digitisation and feel that this is a great opportunity to sensitively conserve our official publications heritage and would recommend any universities similarly reviewing their print holdings to consider this approach in order that we can create a comprehensive and high quality digital resource for all.
Dandy offer both a print and digital service which is unique to the market. For more details on the digitisation project, PIO or any of the services that Dandy offer please contact Donna Ravenhill on
Tel: +44 (0)20 7624 2993
Email: enquiries@dandybooksellers.com * http://www.publicinformationonline.com/about
Responsibility for the information and views set out in this post lies entirely with Dandy Booksellers Ltd, a further blog post will be put up shortly about another source for these types of publications.
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