A recent Law Library of Congress report describes the parliamentary document process in 10 jurisdictions around the world. The report, titled the Lifecycle of Parliamentary Documents, summarizes the findings of research conducted by foreign law specialists in the Law Library’s Global Legal Research Directorate based on legal sources from the jurisdictions surveyed.
The report is composed of individual jurisdictional surveys that describe the procedures used for processing, producing, publishing, collecting, preserving, and distributing to users parliamentary documents in Australia, Canada, the European Parliament, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Portugal, Sweden, and the UK.
Parliamentary documents in the jurisdictions surveyed include documents and records that are produced in parliament, such as bills and related information, explanatory memoranda and bill digests, petitions, tabled papers, written and audio reports of parliamentary proceedings, and parliamentary research publications. The report identifies various systems of processing and preserving such documents, including, where relevant, special procedures for documenting, correcting, and approving records of plenum meetings as well as committee hearings.
Certain types of parliamentary documents are published in the official gazettes of some of the jurisdictions surveyed. In several countries, such as France, Germany, Israel, Portugal, and the UK, documents are preserved in dedicated historical parliamentary archives. The report addresses the role of national or parliamentary archives and of national or parliamentary libraries, as applicable, in preserving and digitizing parliamentary documents.
We invite you to review the information provided in our report. You can also browse additional reports from the Law Library on other topics. To receive alerts when new reports are published, you can subscribe to email updates and the RSS feed for Law Library Reports (click the “subscribe” button on the Law Library’s website).
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