Typical questions

• • I need to read the Scott Report.

• • How can I keep up to date with the latest reports on social care?

Starting points

• • Government reports are often referred to as official publications. They may be underused by students who fail to recognise their importance as a primary source of information. Other commonly requested forms of government publications are Statistical Data and Legislation.

• • Common problems in tracing government documents include:

• • The assumption that all materials are online. While the internet is often the best source for the most recent publications, older items can be removed from websites. Check for the existence of national government web archives and search the main Internet Archive Wayback Machine(archive.org/web). However, note that web archives can often be incomplete or difficult to search. Consult the websites for details on the frequency of snapshots taken and help on searching content. Use the Archives chapter to contact national record offices for advice on their holdings.

• • Government department names and remits change, which can cause difficulty in locating the right website. Try looking for any central government portals. These often have lists of departments and centralised publication sections.

• • Many reports are known by the name of the chairperson rather than their official title. Searches for these on library catalogues are often unsuccessful. Try to find the official paper numbers and issuing department.

• • Some library catalogues do not index individual government documents. Instead they make single entries to series, such as House of Commons Papers, and file items within them numerically. The best advice is to check local cataloguing practices first. Then try to locate the document series and numbers by using the original source of the reference and/or the databases listed below. For example, the Hutton report has the official title Report of the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr David Kelly HC 247 session (2003–04). On many library catalogues it can only be traced by the full title or by searching for the HC or House of Commons papers series. Some common series are: Command papers which often appear in the format Cm100, C100, Cd100, Cmnd100, Cmd100, alongside a session number relating to the year of publication; House of Commons Papers – HC then a number and session year, e.g. HC 95 (2004-05); and House of Lords Papers – HL.