Books from 'His Majesty's Stationery Office'
This website is dedicated to the books published by the British Government from HMSO.
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We provide our own subset of the HMSO catalogue extracted from the official catelogues located in the British Library.
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We are providing images of the covers where possible by collaboration with others.
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We have created a selection of eBooks for some items which may be found on the Apple book store. These have been enhanced and are not just packages of page images.
Subset of the HMSO Catalogue
We are providing a reference site to enable collectors of HMSO books in the period 1936-1950 to find out about the extent of this interesting collection of historical books. The subset of books of interest to us are specifically about the military and social aspects of world war II in the lead up to the war, during the war and the post war recovery period.
This is a work in progress, so some areas are a bit sketchy. The selection covers a whole multitude of things including:
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The Home Front
Areas covering how the population coped at home during the war and in the lead-up to the war, including:
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The Home guard
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Air Raid precautions or Civil Defence
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Agriculture and food production
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Rationing, Utility Goods and price controls
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Fire and Medical services
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Strategy and preparation for war
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Education
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Emercency evacuation
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War-time military operations
Actions of the fighting forces including:
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Air Force reference and training
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Air Force activity including Merchant Airmen
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The Atomic bomb
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Army reference and training
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Army and anti-aircraft activity
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Navy reference and training
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Navy activity including Merchant Seamen
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War-time suffering
Areas showing how the people suffered during the conflict, including:
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Mobilisation of people
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Prisoners of war
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Oppression of populations
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Atrocities and War crimes
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Release and recovery of people
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The Post-War period
What happened after the war was over, including:
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Rebuilding the country both physically and economically
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Creation of the United Nations
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Getting the nation back to work
Images of Books
We are attempting to show a thumbnail of as many books as we can. This can be problematic
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Crown copyright
The vast majority of these HMSO books for the period under concideration have had their copyright period exceeded and so we are able to show our own images of them.
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Personal picture copyright
There still exists a personal copyright on any images that individuals take of such an item. This means that we are not (technically) able to trawl the internet and take other people pictures of what are actually copyright free items themselves. We must obtain permission.
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Organisation ownership
Organisations that own copies of these items are able to charge whatever they like if one wants to show an image taken by us of these owned copyright free items. This means that it is not economically feasible to go to a library and take pictures of these items. (Rant; in other words if the public want to show an image that they take of a public domain item held by a public library funded by the public, they have to pay a large fee)
In other words we can only show an image if we own the item or another owner provides us with a image of their item with permission to use the image. If you want to help share some images:
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Contact us on 'teamwalton@virginmedia.com'.
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Send us scans of any images for items that you find here that don't already have an image. Please make them 500pixels/JPG files.
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On the page for each item, you will find that the URL includes a parameter called 'B='. Can you provide this code with your images.
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We will add you on the contributor page where you can see the items that you have contributed. You may also provide a description of yourself and a link to your business website. We will keep it anonymous if you request it.
Selection of eBooks covering the Ministry of Information
We are very gradually converting some of the Ministry of Information HMSO range into eBooks to make them more available.
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Access to the eBooks
We are not a corporation but a very small outfit, thus we have to charge for them:
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The charges are based on how complex the book is and how many images it contains.
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You can see the range on our 'Get eBooks' tab.
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These are not just packages of screenshots, but formatted ebooks.
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We have provided samples on Apple, please download them to check them out. Search for 'team walton'
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Enhancements to the original content
We have enhanced the original public domain book as follows:
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A linkable table of contents.
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A linkable table of pictures.
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Proper markup for Bullet lists and tables.
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Images redistributed according to their referencing place and captions included.
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Organisations and people that are mentioned have been marked up as links. These link back to this website.
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Useful glossary terms have been marked up as links. These link into the book.
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Maps have been colourised to make them clearer.
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A common references page created from the link references which gives a good summary of cross section of the books subjects.
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Sections giving a summary of all the Organisations, people and glossary terms found in the book
This website uses the data collected from the eBooks to show a complete list of People, Organisations and Glossary items found across all the books. These sections show which books include the references.