Resources of the Week: UK and European Factsheets
By Adrian Janes, Information Services Librarian, London Borough of Havering, UK

Editor’s note: We are very pleased that Adrian is now a regular contributor to DocuTicker, our sister blog. He adds a steady stream of UK and EU documents, and we know these are useful to researchers on both sides of “the pond.” This week, Adrian shares some of his favorite resources.

Following on from the Resource Shelf collections of factsheets derived from US sources, this article will give a taste of some of the similarly high quality documents, on various subjects, which can be obtained from UK and European sites.

The Economic and Social Resource Council gives information on broad areas of life in Britain. Topics include Economic Performance and Development; Governance and Citizenship; and Social Stability and Exclusion.

Taking a wider European view, one of the key ways in which the European Union (EU) fashions policy is from a regional perspective. The overall aim is to make the EU a coherent network of regions without such great economic disparities as currently exist. Inforegio offers an archive of factsheets on regional policy, covering programmes from the late 1990s through to the current funding period of 2007-2013.

In terms of the governance of the EU, there is an excellent collection of periodically updated factsheets from the European Parliament. The headings are How the European Union Works; Citizens’ Europe; The Internal Market; Common Policies; Economic and Monetary Union; and the EU’s External Relations. Each heading in turn is broken down into detailed accounts of particular aspects of the subject (e.g. within How the European Union Works there are descriptions of each of the main EU institutions).

As noted, factsheets can be found on all manner of subjects. An interesting set is provided by Sport England, in its Promoting Sport Toolkit. This covers all the main aspects of how a sports club might publicise itself. However, what makes this collection particularly useful is the fact that, with a little adaptation, most of it can be employed for needs other than sport. For example, there are explanations of how to write a press release, how to embed Google Maps in a web page, and how to create a website. The Case Studies section explains the characteristics of potential participants in sport or exercise. Again, such information could easily be transposed — in this case for other sorts of campaigns aimed at British consumers.

Factsheets ostensibly intended for children and young people are often very good basic primers or refreshers for adults too. The Born Free Foundation’s Kids’ Club has well-illustrated and informative Animal Factsheets on creatures such as lions, basking sharks, polar bears and elephants. In a similar vein, the Young People’s Trust for the Environment has a wide range under the two major headings of Animal Facts and Environmental Facts. Although some topics are peculiar to Britain (e.g. Britain’s Disappearing Habitats), in the environmental field many necessarily have wider relevance (e.g. Climate Change). Some animals covered, for example bison, are also not native to the UK.

The UK Government’s Environment Agency site is truly packed with information, although not all of it comes in the form of a factsheet. The information on Waste is typical, being a mixture of factsheet, webpages and links. In this case, much is aimed at business disposal of waste and the legal obligations involved. One particular area covered is the important WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Regulations, which in turn derive from the EU’s WEEE Directive that came into force in 2007. Factsheets can actually be located for just about any area of the Agency’s work, but finding them often involves proceeding through a chain of links.

This is just a sampling of the remarkable amount of worthwhile information, in concise format, located on the websites of trustworthy UK and European sources. Even if people or organisations may not think of their efforts in terms of Open Access, having a Web presence certainly inspires some with the desire to share their knowledge more widely, and factsheets achieve this aim admirably.

Adrian Janes is an Information Services Librarian with the London Borough of Havering in England, where he has particular responsibility for Government and European Information. He has also contributed to Free Pint and FUMSI, and is a contributor to DocuTicker.