| Description | Journal issued under the title 'Official Circular', bound in annual volumes, and also incorporating the Association's minutes. Issues up to 1894 are the records of the Local Boards Association, the predecessor organisation to the UDCA. This is an incomplete sequence: volume I (1890) and volume IX (1898) are both missing and a number of individual issues are not present in the bound volumes. The annual volumes for 1950, 1951, 1953 and 1971 contain only minutes; it appears from the gap in the numbering that circulars were issued in 1950 and 1951 (which are not present) but that no issues were published in 1953 and 1971.
Each annual volume is numbered up to 1957, Volume LXVIII and all individual issues of the Circular contained within each volume are numbered in a continuous running sequence for the full series, ending with issue number 750 in 1972. Most of the early volumes include 11 issues of the Circular but the frequency of its publication declined from 1950.
The content and format of the circulars has altered over the years but they have generally included current notices, articles, details of progress of bills through parliament, law cases, correspondence and book reviews. From the 1950s, there is more emphasis on legal decisions, legal queries and opinions and questions and answers in Parliament.
These volumes include copies of the minutes, reports and accounts of the Association. From 1902, reports of the annual meeting and conference were printed at the end of each volume although the Official Circulars for 1916-1918 and 1940-1944 do not contain minutes annual meetings or conferences as these were not held in these war periods. From 1937, minutes of the Executive Council and its committees were issued as numbered supplements instead of being printed within the circulars and from this date can be found bound at the end of each volume together with the minutes of the annual meeting and conferences
The majority of the volumes have contents lists, together with indexes to the minutes and the contents of the Official Circulars. They also contain other indexes to specific contents including name indexes for the law cases, subject indexes to law cases and correspondence. The volumes for 1965-1972 include consolidated indexes of legal queries; the start date for the consolidated indexes is 1956. |