Guide last updated by Katie Radford, August 2025
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An official publication is a document published by an ‘official’ body, such as a national government or an intergovernmental organisation. In the UK, official publications include documents such as command papers, white papers, green papers, House of Lords papers, House of Commons papers and bills.
The main focus of this guide is on how to find official publications held at IALS library. Be aware that IALS is not a "depository library" for British government publications; we therefore only buy material of legal interest. If the material you need is not held at IALS Library, the 'Finding publications not held in the library section' of this guide may be of assistance.
If you know exactly what you are looking for you can run a title or author search on Library Search, or a combination of both.
1. Go to the advanced search on Library Search.
Title search:
Select 'Title' from the drop-down search fields and enter the full title in the text box. You may omit words like "the" or "and", for example:
The law of international finance
law of international finance
If you know a specific title, select 'contains exact phrase' as this will ensure the search only looks for the exact title you have entered. If you choose 'contains' your search will find all titles which contain all of the words you enter in the text box anywhere in the title.
Author search:
Select 'Author/Creator' from the drop-down search fields. The author of an official publication is generally the name of the organisation which has produced it, for example:
American Bar Association
International Law Commission
United Nations
Official government organisations are entered in the catalogue under the name of the relevant country, for example:
Great Britain Home Office
Ireland Law Reform Commission
Nigeria Association of Law Teachers
Once you have run the search, you can use the 'Tweak my results' options on the left-hand side of the results page to filter and sort your results in different ways. For instance, you can sort by year of publication.
2. If you find an item you are looking for, note down the classmark and use the floor directories or the guide to Classmarks and the Location of Resources in the Library to locate the item.
3. If your search is unsuccessful, try changing your search filters. To make your search broader, you could try using 'contains' instead of 'contains exact phrase', or try searching across any field rather than just the title field.
4. If your search is still unsuccessful, check whether the title is held at another library (advice on this can be found in the 'Finding Publications not held in the Library' section of this guide).
Notes
A title or author search will only find those titles which have been entered into the catalogue as individual items. It may be that the Library holds the entire series of a particular set of official publications, for example:
ABA Section of Patent, Trademark and Copyright Law. Committee reports
In this case the individual papers cannot be searched separately on Library Search.
If the title is a UK government publication, it is also possible to search by command paper number. Use the advanced search function, choose the title filter and enter the command paper number in the text box, for example:
Cmnd 1033
If you are not looking for a particular item, but would like to check the library's holdings for a particular subject, you can run a keyword, subject or classmark search.
Keyword search:
This searches across the entire catalogue record, so can be useful if a title or subject search does not bring back any results.
1. Use the main search bar on the Library Search homepage, or select the 'Any field' filter on the advanced search.
Once you have run your search, you can use the 'Tweak my results' options on the left-hand side of the results page to filter and sort your results.
Subject search:
This searches across the controlled subject headings of each item on the library catalogue.
1. Go to the advanced search and select 'Subject' from the drop-down search filters.
Once you have searched for a relevant term, you can use the 'Tweak my results' options on the left-hand side of the results page to filter and sort your results.
2. If your search is unsuccessful, try a keyword search. When you have found a record on your desired topic, take a note of the subject headings listed on the catalogue record - you can use these subjects for subsequent subject searches.
Classmark search:
If you know the classmark of the subject or jurisdiction you may want try searching the catalogue using the classmark or searching the bookshelves directly. To find out the classmark try:
Once you know the classmark, you can use the advanced search to search for all items with a particular classmark. Choose the 'Classmark' filter and enter the classmark in the text box.
IALS is not a "depository library" for British government publications; we buy only material of legal interest. The Senate House Library, University of London, has a standing order for Parliamentary publications, but it will not necessarily have everything published by departments and agencies.
You may need to visit another library to obtain the material which you need. Alternatively you may be able to obtain titles from libraries using the interlibrary loan and document delivery services offered by the library at your own institution.
If you need to locate official publications which are not held in the IALS library, try the following steps:
1. Search the catalogue of Senate House Library and/or the British Library.
2. Check the Library Hub Discover catalogue, which includes information on the holdings of more than 200 academic, national & specialist libraries in the UK and Ireland. This will save you time as you do not have to search many separate catalogues.
3. Check the relevant Jurisdiction Guide (if available) as it may contain tips on finding official publications.
4. Check your jurisidiction on WorldLII, as more recent official publications may be made available online.
5. Check the Eagle-i internet portal to see whether it lists any freely available official publications for that jurisdiction on the web.
The freely available Foreign Official Government Gazettes (FOGG) database provides links to online official gazettes for many different jurisidictions. For European countries, the database also provides details of which libraries in the UK (including IALS library) have print collections.
The Gov.uk website offers a search page where it is possible to search accross all available the publications of ministerial departments. You can filter the results by topic, content type and date range. It can be used to find recent consultation papers, impact assessments, and policy papers.
The UK Parliament website contains much information, including bills, parliamentary debates (Hansard), committee reports and other parliamentary papers. A search interface is available to assist with locating parliamentary material on the website.
BAILII provides access to Law Commission Reports for England & Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland. You can browse them from the databases page or search across them by running an Other Materials Search.
For further details of printed official publications for the UK, please refer to our United Kingdom Research Guide.
UK Parliamentary Papers is a subscription database from ProQuest. It contains a number of modules, including House of Commons and House of Lords; some of the collections go back to the 18th century. IALS does not have a subscription to this database but some users may be able to access it via Senate House Library.
Public Information Online (PIO) is a subscription database from Dandy Booksellers. It contains many UK official publications, including House of Commons papers, House of Lords papers and command papers. IALS does not have a subscription to this database.