BSNIP Spectroscopy of 247 type Ia supernovae

We describe our automated spectral classification scheme and arrive at a final set of 626 spectra (of 242 objects) that are unambiguously classified as belonging to Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). Of these, 70 spectra of 30 objects are classified as spectroscopically peculiar (i.e. not matching the spectral signatures of 'normal' SNe Ia) and 79 SNe Ia (covered by 328 spectra) have complementary photometric coverage.

The median SN in our final set has one epoch of spectroscopy, has a redshift of 0.0208 (with a low of 0.0007 and high of 0.1921), and is first observed spectroscopically 1.1d after maximum light. The constituent spectra are of high quality, with a median signal-to-noise ratio of 31.8pixel^-1^, and have broad wavelength coverage, with ~95 per cent covering at least 3700-9800{AA}. We analyse our data set, focusing on quantitative measurements (e.g. velocities, pseudo-equivalent widths) of the evolution of prominent spectral features in the available early-time and late-time spectra.