The Library Association welcomes this consultation document and the spirit of openness that is apparent in its tone. It welcomes the proposals that the proceedings should be available in electronic as well as paper format. In the summary (paragraph 02), comments are invited.

The Library Association is pleased to be able to forward its comments which have been formulated in consultation with its Standing Committee on Official Publications. This Committee is composed of representatives from all branches of the information professions and the members are extremely well informed on matters relating to government information and publications. Several members have an international reputation for their expertise in matters relating to official publications and work at some of the country's foremost collections.

A properly published and printed record of the Debates should be produced within one week, rather than the suggested eight weeks. This should be for both the Plenary Sessions and the Committee sessions. Ideally a printed version of daily proceedings should appear within 48 hours. If it is not possible to achieve a bi-lingual version within this time scale, then a printed version of the debates in the language in which they were delivered should be published after a week and the translated version should appear at the later date. If this is not done, then it will be a disadvantage to speakers of both languages in Wales (and to other citizens of the UK) who rely on their public libraries for access to government information. This point is made in full below under "Format".

Our comments concern the format of publication; the distribution of the publication; its general availability; its name and publicity about new publications.

All versions of the journal must be printed. An electronic version will be very useful in time but first and foremost the proceedings must be available in a printed version. Whilst we appreciate that an electronic version on the Internet will be cheaper to produce and will reach a wider international audience, it is undeniable that such access is only available to those people who are sufficiently affluent to be able to information skills. Most people will, of course, continue to use their public libraries to acquire government information. Although we note the Government’s commitment to connect every public library to the National Grid for Learning by 2002, access to the Internet is not yet well enough developed in the public library sector for all public library authorities in Wales (or the UK) to be able to offer access to the Web site in most branch libraries. Therefore, printed versions should be made available to Welsh public libraries on the same basis as the Internet version. The implication here is that if the Internet version is free then the printed version should be free of charge.

Secondly, we are concerned with the archiving of the debates. In paragraph 17, the green paper only considers the formal archive at the National Library. The public needs access to an archive as well. Obviously there will not be a problem if the Assembly produces a paper copy of all its publications. If, however, there is only an electronic version of all or some of its publications, then there needs to be an official policy for retaining the electronic version and a policy that firmly dictates that the archived record will neither be removed from the Internet nor will be varied or altered retrospectively in any way at all.

Thirdly, the debates will need an index (para 16). It will not be sufficient to rely on a computer-generated index available on the Internet. There will need to be a separately compiled printed index and best practice would be to use a method that is identical in every way to the one used in the production of Hansard. So, for example, there would be separate sequences for debates and written answers and the name index would be interfiled with the topic index. Consistent use (and spelling) of index terms is also essential. The result would be that the index for the Welsh Assembly could be integrated into the one for Hansard and would not produce any difficulties for the researcher.

The Welsh Assembly needs to take account of Copyright legislation and deposit a free copy of all its publications with all 6 UK Copyright Libraries and not just the National Library of Wales Secondly, in order to encourage Welsh citizens to take an interest in the workings of the Assembly, it would be valuable to donate copies to major Welsh public and academic libraries. It would be of great benefit if copies of all its publications could be donated to the British Library Document Supply Service so that the UK’s National Library is given both a reference set and a lending set. Obviously, the Assembly will wish to donate a full set of publications to the Parliamentary libraries at Westminster and in Edinburgh and Belfast. Additionally, though, copies given to major libraries in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland will ensure that access to information about the work of the Assembly is readily available throughout the UK. Thirdly, we would encourage the Assembly to adopt the terms of the 1924 agreement which gives a 50% discount on official publications to any public library in the United Kingdom (the Public Library Subsidy). HMSO is responsible for this scheme.

In addition to the points already raised above we would urge the Assembly to take professional advice from HMSO and the Stationery Office about publication practice. Firstly, we are worried by the last words in paragraph 14. We cannot see any reason whatsoever why the public should not be able to buy Assembly documents. Here we would interpret "public" to mean commercial, research and academic organisations as well as 'the man in the street'. We feel we need to remind the Assembly that there will be considerable library demand for their publications and we note with some concern that in paragraph 15 the Assembly believes it might only have to produce 100 printed copies. We believe that library demand will exceed this and 100 copies would be too few. Secondly, the National Assembly for Wales must establish professional, workable and user-friendly systems for recording and maintaining subscriptions and standing orders for its publications. Again we would urge them to take advice from the Stationery Office and to adopt systems for sales that comply with those used by our best booksellers, subscription agents and libraries. Thirdly, we assume that the Assembly will be producing documents from its Committees that equate to the Select Committee reports of the House of Commons. In this case we would urge the Assembly to ensure that it is easy for booksellers and the general public to buy reports on an ad hoc one-off basis. The target for such an operation would be supply within 5 working days and, again, best practice would be to ensure that booksellers should be allowed a considerable discount. This will mean that libraries and citizens in the UK will be able to acquire National Assembly for Wales publications easily and at a reasonable price.

We believe it will be confusing if the Assembly does not use the generally understood terms for its publications. The journal that publishes what is said should be called "Debates": the "Journal" should be reserved for a record of what was decided. We believe that "Y Llyfr" should be used because it is a distinctive title, we would recommend, though, that the verbatim debates should not be called "The Journal" but be called "The Debates" or "The Proceedings".

We believe it is very important for the new publications to be publicised extensively. We suspect that many interested parties will be unaware of how the National Assembly for Wales intends to conduct its business. We also believe that a great deal of very important business will be transacted by the Assembly and that it will be of vital importance to some commercial organisations as well as to central government and its agencies, local government, research bodies and academic institutions. Extensive publicity will not only bring the work of the Assembly to peoples' attention, it will sell more copies of the Assembly's publications

We hope that our constructive comments are of value to the National Assembly for Wales and we should be very happy to discuss these matters (that are of considerable importance to the information professions) in fuller detail should the Assembly wish it.

The Library Association
January 1999