How the documents library is put together. Settled, but not finished: it is being worked out as the material is worked through, and anything here may be revised.
what goes in
Primary sources: documents produced by a body, or filed with one. Reports, studies, plans, bylaws, permits, agendas, minutes, staff reports, forms, presentations and data extracts. Letters and emails are not included. Submissions filed with a body are included and are marked as submissions, shown under their author rather than under the body they went to.
file names
A date, a short token for the creator, then a description, as in 2024-06-13_BIM_MTFI-agenda-package. The date can be a year, a year and a month, or a full date, depending on what the document itself carries.
dates
The document’s own date, not the date the copy was taken. Where a document carries no date, the note says so, and says where any date shown has come from, such as an internal file path or the file’s metadata.
titles
The title a reader sees is written for a reader. The file name stays in the convention and is shown beneath it in grey, so the two are both visible.
who made it
The body that made the document, named in full. Historical names are kept, so a body appears under the name it had at the time, and committees are named alongside the municipality they belong to.
where it sits in the public record
The agenda, item and page where a document appears, or the page it was published on. For municipal documents the CivicWeb document number is given in the note, because it stays constant when addresses change.
source and capture
The address the copy came from, and a capture in the Internet Archive where one exists, so the page can be read as it stood on the day. Where a document is no longer published, the note says so.
A capture date is the date the page was captured, not the date the copy here was taken. Many of these documents were downloaded well before the library was built, and their captures were made later, from October 2026 onwards, as each entry was worked through. Where a capture predates that, it was made at the time or by someone else.
notes
What the document is, how long it is, and anything a reader needs in order to use it: whether it is a scan and so cannot be searched, which parts are extracts, what it was issued with.
type
Each entry carries a type: agenda package, minutes, staff report, report or study, plan, policy or terms of reference, bylaw, permit or licence, form, presentation or slides, map, data extract, transcript, fact sheet or leaflet, submission, FOI release.
pages
Web pages are not documents and are listed separately, as captures with their dates, because a page changes and a document does not.
what is not done
Sources and captures are still being added, and more documents are still to come. Nothing is removed once it is listed; where something here is wrong it is corrected and recorded on the corrections page.