The Legislative Support Services of The National Diet Library

Introduction

The National Diet Library, as a whole, primarily serves the Diet, or the Parliament, in assisting the Diet Members to perform their duties. At the same time, it has a mission to provide library services for the executive and judicial branches of the national government and for the general public. In other words, the National Diet Library is a large comprehensive library with a combined function of providing research services for the Diet.

It seems that the most striking changes in terms of the legislative support services of the National Diet Library are now under way. One of them is the wave of automation rushing into the office. While the wave reaches everywhere in the Library, it has apparently a larger impact on the legislative research realm. Not only the process, but the products of research activities, are changing by the adoption of a variety of machines and electronic tools.

The other major change currently going on might be called social and political. A younger, more educated and more well-informed cohort has been growing in the Diet. Requests for research from the Diet members vary much more widely in topics and materials than ever before. They are more competitive and demanding for information in a period of political realignment in Japan and economic and cultural globalization.

Along with these trends, the Diet itself lately has been seeking a way to reinforce its legislative function with stronger legislative research support. Easier public access to information about the Diet is also emphasised in this context.

The library, specifically its Research and Legislative Reference Bureau, now faces a critical need to review the services it provides, recalling the starting point.

Brief History of the Library

The National Diet Library was founded in 1948. Prior to the founding of the Library, the people of Japan had a new Constitution in 1946, which established the democratic parliamentary system as the highest state power of Japan. Following this came the recognition that the establishment of a parliamentary library with an effective research function would be absolutely essential to the system.

The National Diet Library Law, under which the Library was founded, explicitly declared the ideal of its establishment as follows: "The National Diet Library is hereby established as a result of the firm conviction that 'truth makes us free' and with the object of contributing to international peace and the democratisation of Japan as promised in out Constitution".

The library has two origins: the libraries of both houses of the Imperial Diet under the Meiji Constitution, and the Imperial Library under the Ministry of Education. Most of the 1 million volumes of the Imperial Library collection were taken over by the present National Diet Library.

The National Diet Library went through its first major developmental period during the 1960's, when the size of the library collections and staff was dramatically expanded, and construction of the main building of the library was completed. The mid 1980's was another remarkable period, when the annex building was founded with enormous book stack space to cope with the rapid increase of materials beyond expectations.

In terms of the legislative research services, most of the basic resources were put in order during the 1960's, and they were rearranged to improve services in the mid-1980's.

Setting of the Library

The Legislature

The Legislative system of Japan is bicameral. In the parliamentary system of government, the Diet designates the prime minister from among its members by a vote. Members of both houses of the Diet, the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, are elected directly by popular vote.

With regard to the House of Representatives, a new electoral system is being adopted in the next general election expected to be held within the next few months. While the current members of the House of Representatives have been elected from the "medium sized" three or more seat constituencies, the new system is a combination of the first-past-the-post and the proportional representation [PR] systems; out of the 500 members of the House of Representatives, 300 are to be elected from the single-seat "small" constituencies, and 200 by a regional PR system.

The House of Councillors has another combined electoral system: while 100 out of the 252 members of the House of Councillors are elected under a nationwide PR system, the rest of the members are elected from 47 prefectural electoral districts, each with 2 to 8 seats.

The Status of the Library in the Diet

The National Diet Library is an integral part of the Diet, along with both houses. Though the Library is independent of the Secretariats of both Houses, it is under the control of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the House of Councillors.

More specifically, it comes under the supervision of the Standing Committees on Rules and Administration of both houses, which examine and approve the rules and regulations for the administration of the Library. The two presiding officers jointly appoint the Librarian, who is required to report to them annually the managerial and financial state of the Library.

Relationship with other branches of the government

The National Diet Library keeps close contact with the executive and judicial offices of the government, especially through its thirty-five branch libraries in the ministries, agencies and the Supreme Court. The Library provides library services to the agencies to support them in performing their duties. Arranging interlibrary loans, delivering materials including foreign government publications, and cooperating in research services are among the services provided. On the other hand, each branch library with its speciality provides information services to the Library. Stronger networking between the Library and the branch libraries is under way.

Organization and staffing of the Parliamentary Library

Organization of the National Diet Library

Librarian

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Deputy Librarian

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Administrative Department
Research and Legislative Reference Bureau
Acquisitions Department
Books Department
Serials Department
Special Materials Department
Library Cooperation Department
Detached Library in the Diet
Ueno Library
Toyo Bunko (Oriental Library)
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35 branch libraries in the executive and judicial agencies of the government.

Research and Legislative Reference Bureau

While the National Diet Library in general serves the Diet, as mentioned above, it has a special department through which the Diet members can seek research or information services. The department, the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau, has 14 divisions with an expert staff of over 150 persons. They are engaged in a variety of research activities, from collecting data to analyzing bills and evaluating arguments on issues, making the best use of the whole Library collection. Occasionally, they draft a bill at the request of a member or a committee of either House.

Besides doing research work on demand, the Bureau conducts anticipatory studies on its own initiative, taking up issues likely to be debated in the Diet. Most of the results of such studies are provided to the Diet members through publication.

Organization of the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau

A simplified organization chart of the Bureau:

Director

Deputy Director

General Affairs Division
Legislative Reference and Co-ordinating Division
Research Materials Division - Research Materials Room
Statutes and Parliamentary Documents Division - Statutes and Parliamentary Documents Room
Politics and Parliamentary Affairs Division
Public Administration and Judicial Affairs Division
Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division
Finance Division
Trade, Industry and Technology Division
Agriculture, Forestry and Environment Division
Land Development and Communications Division
Education and Culture Division
Social Welfare and Labor Division
Overseas Information Division

Out of the 14 divisions of the Bureau in the chart above, 10 divisions from the Politics and Parliamentary Affairs Division onwards are mainly engaged in direct research work. They are organized accordingly to subjects, so that inquiries can be undertaken most efficiently.

Statutes and Parliamentary Documents Room

One of the other four divisions, administrative or supportive, holds a special library of laws and parliamentary documents from all over the world. The library, housed in the Statutes and Parliamentary Documents Room, comprises 340,000 volumes of materials, including parliamentary minutes of 30 national assemblies of the world. The collection is an extremely valuable resource for research activities. The materials in the Room are available to the general public as well as to the staff of the Bureau.

Research Materials

The Bureau also has its own library to support its research activities. It includes about 200,000 books and 3,000 periodical titles. While the major resource for the research services of the Bureau is the materials stored in the huge stacks of the National Diet Library, the collection of working materials is essential for the more frequent and immediate use of the Bureau. These 'research materials' are maintained separately from the general materials of the Library.

Staff of the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau

The Bureau has 16 senior specialists and 5 associate senior specialists among its 153 staff workers as of August 1, 1996. Some of the staff have doctoral or master's degrees, mainly in political science, law and economics. Most of the staff, however, are recruited through competitive and open examinations held once a year. They are often assigned to various sections in the Library other than the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau in the early years of their careers. They are trained as researchers through day-to-day research activities or special training sessions inside and outside the Bureau.

Detached Library in the Diet

Some library services for the Diet members and their staff are provided in the Detached Library in the Diet Building. The Detached Library, with its own 73,000 books and 600 periodicals, serves mainly for their immediate needs. Occasionally requests for further inquiry from the Diet members are passed on to appropriate divisions of the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau. Organizationally, the Detached Library in the Diet is independent of the Bureau.

Library Collections and Other Resources

Size of Collections

As the sole deposit library in Japan, the National Diet Library receives one copy of every private publication throughout the country and up to 30 copies of government publications. In addition, the Library has been increasing its collection by acquiring materials, domestic and foreign, by purchase, exchange, or gift.

As of May 1996, the National Diet Library holds 6,400,000 volumes of books and 150,000 titles of serial publications, including 8,000 newspapers. Various types of non-book materials are also collected, including 220,000 reels of microfilms, 5,800,000 microfiche, and 400,000 discs. The number of CD-ROMs is not big so far, counting 1,400 as of March 1996.

Reading Rooms for the Diet Members

The National Diet Library has various types of special reading rooms reserved exclusively for the Diet members' use: one reading room, 20 individual study rooms, a browsing room, a seminar room and three meeting rooms. These rooms are managed by the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau. They are located on the top floor of the Main Building of the Library, across the road from the Diet Building.

The Detached Library in the Diet Building also has a reading room for the Diet members and their staff. It is situated in the very center of the Main Diet Building at an equal distance from each Chamber.

Services and Products

Services offered by the Library

The services offered to the Diet members through the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau range widely from a simple data finding to a highly complex inquiry depending on the request. The form of the Bureau's answers, therefore, also varies. A good many requests are satisfied with materials: books loaned from the library collections, or photocopies of journal articles. This type of answer, however, very often requires more knowledge and labor than would seem. In order to render better services, each of the research staff has to collect and maintain data which might help the quick response to the request, constantly browsing and checking materials in his or her major area of subject responsibility.

In other cases, the Bureau provides its own reports on issues. On 'hot' topics, for example, reform of the government, deregulation and decentralization, or control of cult groups, the staff produce many research papers either in response to requests, or as preparatory work.

Subject specialists of the Bureau are often asked to provide briefings either at a Member's office or at policy study meetings.

As mentioned above (under 'Research and Legislative Reference Bureau'), bill drafting is one of assignments of the Bureau. During 1995, the Bureau provided 23 draft bills. This kind of service, however, is more often rendered by the Legislative Bureaus of both Houses.

Publications

Most of the results of preparatory research work are published in the Bureau's periodicals, including Reference (monthly), Foreign Legislation (bi-monthly), and Overseas News Guide (bi-weekly), or in ad hoc publications such as Issue Brief and Research Material Series. Some 40 new titles of the Issue Brief are prepared by the staff of the Bureau every year. Each Issue Brief is designed to provide the Diet members with essential information in a concise manner.

Besides these publications, the Bureau compiles and publishes General Index to the Debates in the Diet for every session, and Index to Japanese Laws and Regulations in Force annually.

Workload of the Legislative Research Services

The work load of the Bureau has increased more and more over the years. The total number of answers to requests exceeded 20,000 each year in 1994 and 1995, jumping from some 8,000 in 1980.

Clients Other than the Diet Members

While legislative research services by the Bureau are addressed primarily to the Diet members, it often accepts research requests from the headquarters of political parties and from the Secretariats of both Houses. Sometimes the Bureau answers requests from national and local government offices, academics, researchers and the private sector, including the press, to the extent that services for the Diet members are not undermined.

Developments in Automation

Office Automation in the Research and Legislative Reference Bureau

The Bureau has 38 personal computers, as of August 1, for its staff of 153. Another 11 PCs are to be installed in this summer. Each staff member connected with the Diet will have a PC by the end of the 1997 financial year.

Within the Library, the personal computers are connected to the LAN [Local Area Network].

Through the machines most of the staff make use of the databases including the Library's NOREN (National Diet Library Online Information Retrieval Network) system which involves the catalogues of the Library collections, the Periodical Articles' Index, the General Index to the Debates in the Diet, and commercial databases such as DIALOG, NEXIS, TEXTLINE and LEGI-SLATE. These databases help the staff search for materials and information more quickly and efficiently.

Full Text base System of the Minutes

The Research and Legislative Reference Bureau now developing two major plans for automation. One of them is the construction of a full text data base for the Debates of the Diet [Hansard]. According to the plan, the full text of all debates is to be digitalized at the early stage of compilation of the debates, so that users will be able to retrieve the text completely and with less time lag.

While the General Index to the Debates has long been available online, and an optical disk filing system for the text of Debates has been started, mainly for retrospective research, the full text of the Debates has still to be connected to the online system.

The Secretariats of both Houses and the Library are jointly in charge of developing the new system, which is to be accessible firstly to the Diet members via the LAN, and then to the public by 1999. It means that the full text data base will be opened soon to nationwide and worldwide personal computer networks, through which any person will be able to search the Debates of the Diet.

Total Management System for Legislative Research Services

The other major automation plan of the Bureau is a total management system of research activities and materials. The Bureau has just started the construction of such a system as a 3 year plan.

In the system, records of answers to requests, the text of anticipatory research papers and any other information helpful to the services are to be digitalized and stored online with a special tracking device.

Important Developments in the Library

As mentioned in the Introduction, the legislative research services in the National Diet Library are faced by critical problems. At the same time, the need for better research services is growing.

The Library as a whole has started the plan to build a new library in the western part of the country in an effort to cope with the needs of a digital age.

While it is not clear how far the new library, temporarily called Kansai-Kan, and expected to be opened in 2002, may be able to display the planned function from the very beginning, facilities and devices of the new library could lead to widening the potential of the legislative research services.

Consequently, there are more pressing needs for the staff engaged in the legislative research services to be trained to make the best use of more sophisticated tools, and to be able to evaluate both their merits and demerits, in order to provide better services.