This guide describes the major collections of British Parliamentary Records available in Bobst Library, and the reference tools necessary to access them. There is an extremely high overlap between the Lords' and the Commons' papers, and it is only since the early 1920's that the Lords' sessional papers are indeed unique to the Lords. Journals record the proceedings and decisions made in each house.
Debates are the record of the actual discussion on the floors of both houses.
They are often called Hansard's after their early nineteenth-century publisher. The earliest collection of sessional papers is for the eighteenth century, but it is by no means complete. Three sets in Bobst reproduce papers from this period. House of Commons Sessional Papers of the Eighteenth Century. Scholarly Resources, 1975.