Abstract
Official publications at the British Library Lending Division include the
published and 'semi-published' documents of national and inter-governmental
departments, agencies and fringe bodies, together with local government
publications. The maintenance of such a collection presents special
problems and the Division has a special section to deal with these. The
general principles for selection depend upon the categories being acquired.
British official publications published by HMSO are received on a
subscription basis. Those not published by HMSO are either selected
individually, or acquired under depository arrangements with the issuing
Department. British local government publications are being acquired
through a firm specializing in local government documentation. Foreign
official publications are either acquired on demand, or obtained through
back up libraries such as the Official Publications Library of the British
Library Reference Division or via international interlibrary loan. There
are special arrangements to acquire the output of particular
inter-governmental organizations such as OECD, FAO, Unesco, IAEA and the
Division has been a main depository library for all EC publications since
1973. Thousands of official reports from the United States are acquired
through agencies such as NTIS and ERIC. Recording and shelving of official
publications vary according to the type of publication eg serial,
monograph, microfiche etc. Some of the material acquired is indexed in the
Division's publication British Reports, Translations and Theses and
selected input is forwarded for inclusion in SIGLE (System for Information
on Grey Literature in Europe). (Autor)