Aim: To increase awareness of, and access to,
Parliamentary publications, and to encourage best
practice in the procurement, dissemination and use of
public information.
About Us
Parliamentary Bookshop
The Parliamentary Bookshop is the content suppliers for
Public Information Online. The Parliamentary Bookshop
is a trading division of the House of Commons and has
unparalleled access to documents and information about
them.
Dandy Booksellers has been in business
since 1992 and specializes in the supply of
Parliamentary material.
Dandy is the one stop shop for all UK Official
Publications.
We have worked with our library customers to develop a resource which is both
comprehensive and easy to use
What is Public Information Online?
• Public Information Online is a web-based database of
electronic publications from:
- UK Parliament
- Scottish Parliament
- Northern Ireland Assembly
- Scottish Government
•
•
•
•
All material is available in electronic PDF format
Updated daily on the day of publication
No hidden monthly or yearly fees
Once you have purchased a session you will have
access permanently
Why Subscribe?
Why Subscribe to PIO?
•
PIO is simple to use, offers you UNLIMITED ACCESS and saves you money
•
Comprehensive electronic Parliamentary resource – used by all major academic libraries
in the UK as well as The British Library and National Library of Scotland
“The Benefit of Public Information Online is that it offers a “one-stop-shop” for access to the
publications of the Scottish Parliament and Government and the Northern Ireland Assembly as
well as the UK Parliament at Westminster. This is why the British Library is subscribing to the
product for the use of its patrons. “ – Jennie Grimshaw, Curator, Official Publications, British
Library
“I think it's excellent. The improvements are great. I particularly like the Bill tracker and the
ability to find associated documents.” – Simon Robinson, University of Leeds
•
Ideal companion to House of Commons Parliamentary Papers from Proquest which runs
to 2006. PIO starts from 06/07 session onwards
•
Updated on the day of publication – no need to wait days for Parliamentary documents
•
Know as soon as a document is available with customizable RSS or Email Alerting
•
PIO fully supports multi-user access both on and off site via IP address or User name and
password
Our Mission
Save Time . . . Save Space . . . Save Money . . .
SAVE SPACE
SAVE TIME
Keep abreast of ALL
Parliamentary Papers
without having to find
shelf space for them
No need to spend time
receipting and managing
Parliamentary material
SAVE MONEY
Cost of hard copy is 5 times greater per Session
than a subscription to PIO
Westminster Content
All Westminster material from 2006-07 session onwards
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
House of Commons Papers
House of Lords Papers
Command Papers
Bills and Bill Amendments
Explanatory Notes to Bills
Standing and Public Bill Committees
Acts and Explanatory Notes
Amending Statutory Instruments
House of Commons Daily Hansard *
House of Lords Daily Hansard *
House of Commons Weekly
Information Bulletin *
* From 2008-09 session onwards
Scottish Parliament Content
All Scottish Parliament material from session 3 onwards (June 07- Present)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Papers
Bills and Explanatory Notes
Policy Memorandums to Bills
Marshalled Lists
Accompanying Documents to Bills
Delegated Powers Memorandums
Groupings
Business Bulletins
Official Report Meeting of Parliament
Minutes of Proceedings
Written Answers
Official Reports of Committee Debates
Acts and Explanatory Notes
Northern Ireland Assembly Content
All Northern Ireland Assembly material from 2008-09 session onwards
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Papers
Bills
Explanatory and Financial
Memorandums
Notices of Amendments
Marshalled Lists
Groupings
Committee Reports
Registers of Member’s Interests
Acts and Explanatory Notes
Official Report Hansard
Official Report Hansard Written Answers
Speed & Format
Know what is passing through Parliament on a daily basis
• All Sections updated daily
• All material available in
PDF format
• Majority of PDFs
available on the day of
hard copy publication
• Stored in an SQL
database on a dedicated
server
Content can be supplied at the end
of a session for you to hold on
your own servers
Subject Records
• Subject Records
Thesaurus
PIO uses Parliamentary Information Management
Services (PIMS) records which follow the House of
Commons Thesaurus. These records are produced
by 14 full-time cataloguers at the House of Commons
Library in London.
• Over 5000 Subject Categories
allows users to narrow down searches into relevant
subject areas, including:
Health, Employment, Education,
Law, Income Tax
My PIO
My PIO has been set-up to help you keep completely
up to date with the latest additions to PIO
• Saved Searching
Create your own collection of
search results. Access, edit or
delete these search results at a
later date.
• Email Alerting & RSS Feeds
Alerts can be set up by:
Parliament,
Paper Category,
A Particular Bill,
Corporate Author
Choose the frequency and format of your email alerts
Bill Tracking
The Public Information Online Bill Tracker allows you to easily follow
the progress of a Bill as it goes through Parliament.
• Bills are listed by Parliamentary
Session - simply choose the Bill that
you want to follow.
• View the documents associated with
your Bill.
• Search for keywords.
• Order results chronologically,
alphabetically or by type of document.
• Save your search results to use at a
later date.
• Sign up to RSS or email alerts to stay
completely up to date with new
additions to your chosen Bill.
Searching
Boolean Searches
Boolean searching - Narrows down your search using special terms before
your keywords. Can be useful to minimize the number of search results.
Boolean operators
AND (To make sure a
keyword is included)
OR (Finds a matching
document if either of the
terms exist in a document)
NOT (To make sure a
keyword is not included)
“credit crunch” AND
“housing crisis”
Wildcard
Wildcard Searches
Perform single or multiple
character wildcard searches.
For words where you are
unsure of the spelling, use
the “?” to replace a character
e.g. organi?ation would find
organization or organisation.
Use an asterisk for multiple character wildcard
searches e.g. research* to find researcher,
researching, researches, or researched
Fuzzy
Fuzzy Searches
Fuzzy search: Use fuzzy searches to find words with
similar spellings to your search term. Very useful for
alternate spellings and medical terms or words that are
tricky to spell. May bring up a very large number of results.
To do a fuzzy search
use the tilde, "~",
symbol at the end of a
Single word Term.
Search for ortism~
Brings up results for Autism
Proximity
Proximity search
Find words that are within
a specific distance from
each other.
To do a proximity search
use the tilde (~) symbol at
the end of a Phrase.
“credit crunch housing"~10
Use to find documents that contain the terms ‘credit crunch’
and ‘housing' within ten words of each other.
Product Development
Product Development
• Welsh Assembly Parliamentary publications will
be added to PIO by the end of 2009.
• Format: We aim to add the choice of viewing
documents on PIO in HTML format. Our challenge
currently is to find a reliable method of converting
PDF documents (created in a variety of different
programs with widely different content e.g graphics)
into reliable, accurately formatted HTML files.
Working Together
Dandy Booksellers, the
one stop shop for all UK
official publications, is
partnering with Bernan,
the leading distributor of
official U.S. government
and intergovernmental
publications, to make
Public Information Online
available to libraries in
North America.
Hard copy value of material currently on PIO
Special Introductory Offer
Special Introductory Offer Price
Save better than 10% for 1st Year
PIO Annual Subscription
Introductory price - $9000
All information currently on PIO across all sessions would cost
in excess of $90,000 USD if bought in hard copy!
Start Saving Money Today!
Free Trial
PIO can save you money, it’s comprehensive and it’s easy to use.
Don’t just take our word for it see for yourself with a no obligation free trial!
Please contact pio@bernan.com to register for your free trial
Try PIO today, what have you got to lose!
Feedback
Feedback
We would really appreciate any feedback and we would like to
be able to ensure PIO becomes a valuable resource to you
and your library users.
Thank you for your interest,
Donna Ravenhill
Dandy Booksellers Ltd
Units 3 & 4, 31-33 Priory Park Road
London, NW6 7UP
+ 44 (0)20 7624 2993
info@publicinformationonline.com
Bruce Samuelson
Director, Marketing & Library Services
Bernan
4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 200
Lanham, MD 20706
301-459-2255 x5711
pio@bernan.com