Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 March 2016
This article by Jennie Grimshaw presents an overview of the transition of UK government publishing from print to electronic between the mid-1990s and 2016. It goes on to describe the tools being developed by the British Library in collaboration with the other five legal deposit libraries, to collect, preserve, organise and provide access to born digital government publications. This paradigm shift in official publishing gives the libraries a window of opportunity to improve their management of these materials and ensure that they can be found through their catalogues more easily than their print predecessors.
1 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Government.Direct: a prospectus for the electronic delivery of government services (Cm 3438, 1996).
2 Education for Change, ‘Maintaining Access to Government Information Collaboratively (MAGIC): a feasibility study’ (EfC 2008) [unpublished report to the British Library].
3 National Audit Office, Government on the Internet: progress in delivering information and services online: report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (TSO 2007). (HC 2006-07, 529) <https://www.nao.org.uk/report/government-on-the-internet-progress-in-delivering-information-and-services-online/> accessed 29 December 2015.
4 The National Archives, ‘Web continuity matters: an overview and update for government organizations’ (TNA 2008).
5 Amanda Spencer, ‘Preserving the content and the network: an innovative approach to web archiving’ (TNA 2008) <http://www.bl.uk/ipres2008/presentations_day1/08a_Spencer.pdf> accessed 29 December 2015.
6 Martha Lane Fox, ‘Directgov 2010 and beyond: revolution not evolution’ (Cabinet Office 2010) <https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/directgov-2010-and-beyond-revolution-not-evolution-a-report-by-martha-lane-fox> accessed 2 December 2015.
7 Jennie Grimshaw, ‘The Digital Documents Harvesting and Processing Tool’ (2015) 10(2) ALISS Quarterly 6.
8 Peter Webster, ‘Crawling the UK web domain’ (UK Web Archive Blog, 16 September 2013) <http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/webarchive/2013/09/domaincrawl.html> accessed 20 December 2015.
9 Sabine Hartmann, ‘2015 UK Domain Crawl has started’ (UK Web Archive Blog, 2 September 2015) <http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/webarchive/2015/09/2015-uk-domain-crawl-has-started.html> accessed 29 December 2015.