Bringing the Electronic Library to Parliament
Opportunities and Challenges

The starting point

The objective for most of the parliamentary libraries which have developed significantly during the past ten years has been to improve the quality of library, information and research services provided by the parliamentary library. Each library has functioned with a high degree of independence and self reliance and, whilst cooperation between parliamentary libraries has occurred, in reality this has been at a relatively superficial level. Information and advice about methods and approaches have been shared, but there are few examples of cooperative information systems.

However, the environment is changing rapidly and parliamentary libraries are becoming part of the global network of libraries and information services using and sharing information resources held electronically in digital form. The characteristics we can see in our environments include the following:

• Parliamentarians, and particularly their staff, will have high levels of information literacy skills and will be comfortable working with information in an electronic form;

• a dramatic shift in publishing from print to digital formats;

• international electronic networks which will break down geographic and language barriers to a large extent;

• parliaments (and nations) will grapple with problems on a regional and global level in many instances;

• a very competitive information industry with many sources, apart from the parliamentary library , available to parliamentarians; and a general acceptance that users pay for value added information services with parliamentarians able to choose between using the parliamentary library or an alternative source, making judgments on quality and price.

Five strategies

1. Parliamentary libraries must establish strong cooperative links within their region devising appropriate mechanisms to ensure that all parliaments have access to key strategic data and information relevant to the region.

   The individual libraries which cooperate effectively will benefit from a reduced emphasis upon building and organising print collections aimed at achieving a high degree of self sufficiency and will be able to apply their resources more creatively.

2. Parliamentary libraries will need to develop special skills in providing guides to information resources available on electronic networks, to improve their capacity to filter the relevant from the irrelevant, and to enable their clients to understand and apply the information and data relevant to their parliamentary duties.

3. There will be a need to develop a client focus which will provide a service tailored to the individual needs of each parliamentarian. This will involve a close relationship between the parliamentary library and each parliamentarian, the flexibility to design a personalised mix of services and a capacity to respond swiftly to changing requirements.

4. Parliamentary libraries will need to maintain strong alliances with the providers of information technology to the parliament, as library services will be dependent upon these technologies. Liaison with the IT providers in developing the office information systems for parliamentarians will enable links to be created directly with the parliamentary library's own systems.

5. It will be important to forge strong alliances with major information industry providers as geographic and language barriers rapidly disappear. There will be strong competition for parliamentary libraries from information brokers and the libraries will need to achieve a competitive edge if they are to retain their role in the parliamentary process. The access to resources and information provided by strong regional or global cooperation would be a key ingredient in gaining such an edge.

Parliamentary libraries are in transition at present. They still have significant collections of information resources in print formats which are organised along traditional library lines. However, a growing proportion of the resources used are in electronic form, for example, CD Roms and online databases. Many parliamentary libraries are building their own databases including fulltext documents and indexes. Access to the Internet is increasing and parliaments are publishing their parliamentary debates, legislation and other key documentation on the Internet. Email communication via the Internet is beginning to replace letters and telephone communications.

The next stage in the development of the electronic library will see us move from the print library paradigm. The Net will see information contributed to a global collection accessible by all. Parliamentary libraries will build their own guides to what is relevant to the issues before their parliament and will contribute their publications and databases. These will be shared and offer scope for greater cooperation between parliamentary libraries in developing tailored guides to sources. Parliamentary libraries will specialise in public policy issues for example. The library staff will provide different services and will need new skills. The relationship with clients will be radically different as parliamentarians no longer need to rely so completely upon the parliamentary library.

The needs of parliamentarians

Parliamentarians will have direct access to enormous resources via the Internet and other online services. Their offices will rely upon electronic information systems and the parliamentary network should enable them to use one office although they may move from parliament house to the electorate or even overseas on a delegation. They will have network links to their political party headquarters and to their colleagues. They will have access to online news services which can be profiled to cover their special interests. Digital radio and television coverage would also be available in many countries. They will know how to use electronic information systems and to manage their work with electronic diaries, etc.

In addition they will continue to have a need for the parliamentary library provided it has adapted to the new environment. The needs of parliamentarians will require careful and systematic assessment from time to time with the results translated into modified library service design. However, I suggest that some of the needs will take the following forms:

• assistance in swiftly locating quality and reliable sources on the Internet relevant to a particular subject field;

• the preparation of background information, chronologies and review articles to save the time of the parliamentarian in coming to grips with significant issues;

• advice on the accuracy of particular information sources or data held by the parliamentarian;

• comparative international information;

• policy advice;

• information on subjects not usually dealt with by the parliamentarian and, therefore, not represented in the office information system;

• specific documents or facts not accessible electronically;

• verification of information available on the Net which lacks the quality control applied by editors of scholarly journals, etc.

Issues

There are many issues which deserve discussion. In several cases the issues are being considered on many fronts and there is time for parliamentary libraries to contribute to the debate and to help shape the outcome. I have selected four issues to consider.

1. The Internet and democracy

Parliamentary libraries are an essential part of the democratic process in that they make it possible for parliamentarians to be informed and enlightened when considering the many complex issues which come before the parliament. The Internet is capable of adding great strength to the forces for democracy because of its capacity to make information widely available at little if any direct cost to the user. The Net itself operates democratically. It is decentralised and is a many-to-many medium. It does not push information at the public in the way that television does. People use the Net deliberately and are seeking to be better informed and are willing to see issues from all perspectives. The draw the information they need from the Net.

Parliamentary libraries, therefore, will need to respond to the potential for the community at large to be better informed on public policy issues as this, in turn, will impact upon the level of detail with which parliamentarians will be required to deal with constituent requests. The Library will need to be able to support the parliamentarian with expert advice and , on a broader front, parliamentary libraries should support free speech on the Net, the dissemination of political views whether those of the majority or a minority, and resistance to all attempts at autocratic regulation of the Net.

2. The need for organisational change

As parliamentary libraries move from being a repository for print sources of information to what may be more appropriately described as an information transfer service there will be a need for many changes and some will be organisational.

At an elementary level it is important that the changing organisational structure not be driven by the technocrats in the library or the parliament. In my experience the information system specialists with computing expertise devise rigid organisational structures, apply centralised decision making and place limits on communication. It will be the non- technocrats who achieve the organisational structure which will best suit the needs of the parliament and parliamentary library. The structure must reflect the needs of the parliament and the emerging global networks of parliamentary libraries. It should be adaptable to the vision of the future developed by the library leadership and it should provide a library of the appropriate scale.

Many parliamentary libraries have organisational structures based on subject clusters and this remains the appropriate basic organisational building block for an electronic parliamentary library. Given that many parliamentarians will have direct access to a wide range of electronic information sources, the subject clusters may need to change their standard approaches. There will be a continuing need for library staff to be capable of providing expert advice and a balanced perspective on the issues which come before the parliament. In other words, to assist the parliamentarian to become informed, or knowledgeable, to understand what the issue is about. This will require subject expertise and a capacity to filter the relevant from the irrelevant, given the overwhelming quantity of information available on many matters.

The subject clusters will create specialist guides to public policy sources available electronically and will review and summarise the current situation in relation to many on-going issues of continuing interest to the parliament. The subject clusters will also publish background material and information electronically and ensure that the documentation of the parliament is available electronically for all who need it.

Parliamentary library staff will be experts in assisting parliamentarians in the design, maintenance and operation of their electronic office information system and will generally transmit specifically tailored information or advice electronically to their clients.

The subject clusters will also provide an educative service for parliamentarians unfamiliar with a discipline and its basic theories and principles. A small, and shrinking component of the subject cluster staff resources, will be devoted to the organisation and maintenance of the print collection. There will be no separate technical service function within the organisational structure.

The mix of skills within each subject cluster will vary, but librarians, or information specialists or brokers as they will be known, professionals with skills in information retrieval, evaluation and synthesis, will be particularly important as they will provide a flexible staffing component, moving between subject clusters as changing levels of client demand dictate.

3. Copyright

There is no clear position yet concerning copyright in relation to information held and disseminated in electronic form. In several countries parliamentarians have enjoyed the right to copies of print material, whether or not the material was published overseas, without the requirement to pay any copyright fee or to be limited by definitions of fair dealing or fair use.

However, there is a considerable agitation being made by copyright owners, particularly in the USA, to widen the rights they enjoy in relation to the use of their information materials held in digital form. For example, the World Intellectual Property Organisation is working on a Protocol to be added to the Berne Convention which would require signatory countries to establish certain standards including transmission rights for copyright owners. Thus, the viewing of a document held in digital form without the permission of a copyright owner would be considered a breach, let alone making a copy of the document.

In some countries, including Australia, there is a system of statutory licences which allow educational institutions, for example, to copy documents for students on the payment of the annual licence fee. A legal challenge is currently underway to extend the system of statutory licensing to documents in digital form which may be made available on the university network across the entire campus.

If we look at parliaments, their networks linking parliamentarians, parliamentary libraries and the personal use of external networks by parliamentarians from their office or home computer, there are some complex issues if we seek to retain the unfettered access to information currently enjoyed. The situation is complicated by the breakdown of jurisdictional boundaries when we deal with electronic networks.

One option for parliamentary libraries or parliaments is to pay an annual licence fee to the appropriate national collection agency for all PC's linked to the networks. This fee would cover all viewing and copying of digital documents by parliamentarians individually or by the library on their behalf. It would also cover the loading of some full text documents in high demand on the parliament's own network databases. The fee, in addition to providing some remuneration to the copyright owner, would also encourage a higher degree of discrimination in the copying of documents and the avoidance of unnecessary copying.

Another option is to argue for free access by parliamentary libraries and parliamentarians to information required for their parliamentary duties notwithstanding the medium in which the information is held. Because of the commodity status information now has and the broad support for intellectual property issues which has emerged strongly with the growth of the information society, I believe that continued free access is going to be hard to justify.

A statutory licence is another option but the small scale of parliamentary library operations makes this a cumbersome approach to adopt.

It is a time of uncertainty and change. Parliamentary libraries, as they enter the electronic age, may need to protect themselves in terms of unrestricted access to the information they require. They should act, nationally at least, in concert in order to achieve a common outcome in relation to copyright. If transmission rights and copying rights for electronic documents are held by copyright owners, a negotiated agreement with the appropriate collection agency may be the least cost method of maintaining access to electronic source material.

4. Free speech

Parliamentary libraries may need to argue for the right to Free Speech as many governments seek to regulate the Net. Parliamentarians and many others in the community are concerned that children can access objectionable material on the Internet, but some of the regulatory controls proposed by governments seriously jeopardise free speech.

New Zealand drafted a Bill which made the service provider responsible for any objectionable material accessible through the service, whether or not the service provider was aware of its existence. Comment in Australia was that if this approach were to be adopted in Australia it would mark the end of online services in Australia.

The issue is complex. As individual governments seek to prohibit the publication or transmission of objectionable material variations occur between jurisdictions. The legislation has no force in preventing access to objectionable material published in another jurisdiction. There are variations also in what represents community standards and what may be deemed objectionable as a result. The issue is compounded by attempts to apply one form of regulation to all uses of the Net. The privacy which ought to be accorded private email correspondence is a case in point.

Censorship of print material is not a problem for parliamentary libraries in many parts of the world. But, in many of these countries, censorship of the Net is seen as a valid requirement. Parliamentary libraries, dependent upon access to whatever information the parliament requires, must take an active interest in these debates and continually urge that free speech be protected and censorship be kept to a minimum. The situation is very fluid and parliamentary libraries are in a position where they can exert some influence to obtain a more desirable future for themselves and their clients.

Diversity between parliamentary libraries

There is great diversity between parliamentary libraries and some are not yet in a position to become an effective electronic library, perhaps not even a well endowed library with trained staff and an adequate collection of books.

Many small libraries, for example, in Eastern Europe and in some of the CIS countries, have been fortunate in setting up their libraries using IT and documentation held in digital formats. This was achieved with the support of larger libraries and the CRS in particular. It is an example which needs to be followed by other well funded parliamentary libraries because the only viable way in which a very small parliamentary library can reach the point where it can provide a reasonable level of service to its parliament is by applying information technology and sharing in the rich resources available on the Internet. The costs of books and the cost of the space they require is too great to be sustained by a small, emerging parliamentary library. We should make an inventory of those libraries without any IT capability or access to the Internet and make it a major part of the next Medium Term Plan for the Section to seek to correct this situation.

The future

We need to share resources by publishing all the key documents of our parliaments on the Internet and cooperate in the development of specialised databases, guides to Internet resources and on policy matters such as copyright. The electronic library provides us with the opportunity to provide a higher level and quality of service than we have achieved before. The challenge is for us to shape our organisations, develop our skills and redesign our services so that they meet the meeds of our clients in a cost effective and timely manner. Let us share our views, thoughts, problems and solutions in facing these challenges as they are common to us all and we will all benefit from facing the challenges together, providing mutual support and encouragement.