National Assembly Library of the Republic of Korea

Brief History of the Library

The Foundation of NAL

The National Assembly Library (NAL) was founded to meet the information needs of the Members on February 20, 1952, in Pusan, the provisional capital of the nation in the midst of the 1950-1953 Korean War.

The establishment of the National Assembly Library was initiated in the Moo-duck Hall of the Kyungnam Provincial Office that was used as the temporary assembly hall with the proclamation of a "Resolution for the creation of a national assembly library" by sixteen Members including Taek-joong Yoon on July 26, 1951. The purpose of their resolution was to establish a reading room, even with only a few collections of domestic and foreign newspapers and reading materials, in the hope that it would help them to carry out their legislative roles, although the nation was at war.

Thus, with a very modest collection of only 3,604 books and a staff of four, the National Assembly Library of the Republic of Korea was born.

On November 26, 1963, the National Assembly Library Law was enacted, proclaiming the birth of the National Assembly Library as an independent institute of the parliament. But after this declaration, due to the swirl of political changes, the Library's status was changed and its law was abolished, making it necessary to become a unit or supporting unit of the Secretariat until the National Assembly Library Law was reenacted in 1988.

Major developmental periods

Since the foundation of the Library, over the past four decades, the library has grown steadily in both function and organization. But it was in the 1980s when it marked an epoch in development, particularly when the Library moved into a new granite-stone building with a total floor space of approximately 26,000 square meters. This was the first time the Library had its own independent building and embarked on a sweeping computer project for the automation of both parliamentary affairs and library management.

On December 29, 1988, the National Assembly Library Law was reenacted and the Library was reborn as an independent unit of the National Assembly.

Setting of the Library

Korean Legislature

The present type of government is a presidential system in which the President is directly elected by the people for a single five-year term. The National Assembly is unicameral with a mixed system of electing individual members as well as having a proportional system.

The total number of Members of the present Constituent Assembly is 299, with 46 Members chosen through the proportional system.

Location of NAL in the Parliamentary Structure

The director of the NAL is appointed by the Speaker of the National Assembly with the advice and consent of the House Steering Committee according to the National Assembly Law. Although the Library is an independent unit of the legislature, the director must report to the House Steering Committee for the inspection and approval of its budget.

Sharing Arrangements

Relationships with other institutions or libraries are mostly carried out through the regular meetings of the Korean Library Association. And although not active, an Interlibrary loan service is available for users nationwide. Recently, the Library has established a research sharing agreement along with interlibrary loans with the Supreme Court Library.

Organization and Staffing

Principal Units

The NAL is comprised of the following: the Legislative Information Research and Analysis Department, the Acquisition and Processing Bureau, the Information Technology Management Bureau, the Office of Planning, Budgeting and Auditing, and the General Affairs Division.

The Legislative Research and Analysis Department is divided into six groups. The divisions are: Political and Diplomatic Affairs, Judicial and Public Administration, Education and Science, Finance and Economy, Industry and Trade, and Welfare and Environment, each headed by a division chief. The department is staffed with 23 professional researchers who have a minimum qualification of a doctoral degree in their respective areas. Grouped into six divisions, as mentioned above, each consists of three to five researchers.

The Acquisition and Processing Bureau comprises the Acquisition Division, the Cataloging Division, and the Inter-Library Cooperation Division, where the tasks of material collecting and cataloging along with domestic and international cooperation take place.

The Reference Service Bureau provides collected and categorized materials to users and takes charge of maintaining the reading rooms and collections of the Library. It includes the Circulation Division, the Non-Book Materials Division, the Parliamentary and Legal Documents Division and the Information Service Division.

At the Information Technology Management Bureau, the automation plan of the Library is established and analyzed and various forms of database are produced, maintained and preserved. This bureau has three offices: the Automated System Division, the System Analysis Office, and the Database Production Division.

Staff

The NAL has 276 permanent staff members. Over half of the staff consists of librarians who have majored in Library Science: 98 librarians and 47 assistant librarians. With the director included, there are 45 administrative staff members. The other staff consist of 21 persons working within the computer management/programming area, 23 researchers, and 42 clerical/technical staff.

Training

To keep up with the fast developing society and the globalization of the world, the Library has language programs for interested staff members. We also promote and plan overseas language/intern programs. An obligatory training program at the Library is the on-the-job training at the Civil Servant Central Training Institute. The Library also has several computer education sessions and seminars on the ethics of civil servants.

Library Collections and other resources

Collection Size

The total collection of the library is almost 1,100,000 volumes including over 160,000 bound periodicals and over 300,000 master's and doctoral degree dissertations. In addition, bound newspapers, microform material, audio and video tapes, and CD-ROM are also available. The number of domestic and foreign periodicals is approximately 13,300 titles, and the number of newspaper subscriptions is nearly 770. And the Social Sciences Index/Fulltext, ABI/Inform, GPO, EconLit, PAIS International, and so on, make up the 35 different kinds of commercial CD-ROM in our library.

The library also has in store over 1,600 maps and almost 600 individual art objects.

The general book collection of NAL can be classified into the following:

Collection classified by language:

Collection policy

Most of the Library's collection of domestic materials is dependent upon legal deposit from government agencies, research institutions, and publishers' associations according to the National Assembly Library Law. However, most foreign materials are purchased through book jobbers. Liaison officers of the NAL stationed in the US, Japan, France, and China collect and inform the Library of local materials and information. Another method of acquisition is the use of exchange arrangements made with 254 institutions of 64 countries. As the Library is a legal depository library for all UN materials, those and related materials are being effectively collected.

Reading rooms

There is a total of 15 reading rooms at the National Assembly Library including the Reference Room, the Members' Reading room, the Newspaper Reading Room, the Periodical Reading Room, and many more. The closest reading room available to the Members is the mini reading room which is open inside the plenary session hall in the National Assembly Building during the plenary sessions. There is also a Members' Reading Room next to the main entrance of the National Assembly Members' Building open regularly. The Library itself is less than five minutes away from the Assembly Building by foot.

Services and Products

As the mission of the Library is to support the legislative activities of Members and their staff, a few of the library services provided are specialized and limited to them only. These services are the following:

Research and Analysis Service

Research and analysis of information services for the legislative activities and examinations of state affairs of the Members are provided by 23 researchers at the Legislative Analysis and Research Department. Indirect services are also provided through the publication of legislative information. The researchers research and analyze current and developing issues in their own areas of expertise which are then published into materials such as Issue Brief, Info-Brief, Analysis of International Issues, and Analysis of Legislative Research.

Bibliographic reference service for the inspection of bills

Bibliographic reference service of domestic and foreign journals, monographs, dissertations, newspaper, and commercial databases are provided for the study of bills or specific issues.

Translation/Interpretation Duties

Five specialists, specializing in English, Japanese, French, Russian, and Chinese, provide translations on legislative information and current issues of interest upon the request of the Members. They also provide interpretation in their specialized languages when needed.

Summarized translations of articles, editorials and analysis reports related to legislation, law and Korea of 10 major international newspapers, including the Washington Post, Le Monde, Yomiuri, and so on, are available on email via the local area network within the National Assembly grounds.

Multimedia and database service

Information on the Internet and various forms of databases including CD-ROMs of bibliographic information and imaged full-texts of journals and papers is collected and provided upon request.

List of New Arrivals

A list of newly received books, video tapes compact discs, and so on, of value for the legislative activities of the Members, is provided weekly on the electronic bulletin board via the local area network.

Free photocopying service

The Library provides free photocopying services exclusively for Members and their staff only.

As the NAL plays the role of a national library as well as a parliamentary library, other major services provided by the Library are the following:

Publication and distribution of national bibliographic information

The publication of national bibliographic indexes of domestic materials for nationwide distribution is provided at the Library. Approximately 1,500 copies are printed for each publication and are distributed free of charge. Particularly, the Index to Korean Periodical Articles has been published by the NAL since 1964 for the effective use of serial publications. Another bibliographic index is the Index to Korean Master's and Doctoral Theses which has been provided by the Library since 1969.

Digitalization of national bibliographic information

Today, as the Library is working on digitalizing the national bibliographies on CD-ROMs and producing a database to promote on-line access to this service, users can retrieve bibliographic information through either Chollian, a commercial network or the National Administrative Total Information System (NATIS). The digitalization of this data is an ongoing project, into the future.

Advertisement of services

For the effective use of the above mentioned services, the services are advertised to the Members and their staff through the National Assembly Broadcasting Network and various booklet and pamphlets distributed to the offices of the Members and their staff. These materials are also handed out to them during the introductory education programs provided for the Members and their staff at the beginning of a new session.

The workload and services provided by the Library in the year 1995 can be summarized into the following:

Acquisition

The total number of monographs collected in 1995 through deposits, purchases, exchanges and self-publications amounts to 65,760 volumes of monographs, 56,590 volumes of periodicals, 486 newspaper titles, 23 kinds of CD-ROMs, 448 video tapes, 52 CDs, 214 cassette tapes, 304 rolls of microfilm, 7,766 pieces of microfiche, and 61 maps.

Cataloging

Since 1990, the Library's collections (primarily the social science collections) have been and still are being digitalized. As of October 1995, the Library has been cataloging occidental titles by using the CAT CD-450 of OCLC.

Quick Reference Service

The importance of this service of providing researched and analyzed information on various subjects upon the requests of the Members is emphasized at the NAL and the number of requests have accelerated yearly and the total number of requests made during 1995 was 443.

Circulation

The circulation of materials increased by 19.5% in 1995. And the number of users has increased by approximately 14% compared to the previous year.

Other information services

Bibliographic information relating to the bills being introduced in the Assembly is provided to the Standing Committee Members and their staff. This information is collected and analyzed from newspaper articles, periodicals, theses, and monographs. The total number of requests made for this service was 74, creating 3,554 volumes of indexes.

The workload of the five language specialists for 1995 amounted to 107 research/translations. And 1,466 translations of summaries of newspaper clippings were provided on email via the local area network.

The number of reference requests made to the reference librarians to retrieve materials for specific subjects last year amounted to 172,081 requests from 33,946 persons.

Main users

As the primary function of the library is to serve the National Assembly, naturally the main clients are Members, their staff and officials working with the Secretariat. Also the government ministries and agencies, scholars, teachers, graduate students, members of the press and the staff of foreign embassies are entitled to use the library. In addition, the library is now issuing an increasing number of regular membership cards and temporary permission cards to the general public in an effort to further promote utilization of the Library's materials.

Developments in Automation

The automation and database system of the National Assembly is being promoted to provide accurate and timely information to support the legislative activities and reviewing of policy-making of the Members. Within the National Assembly grounds, there are approximately 600 terminals connecting the library, Secretariat, parliamentary committees and the offices of Members via one single network.

The National Assembly network system enables access to an electronic bulletin board, E-Mail, state of introduced bills, committee schedules, the National Assembly Online System (NOLIS), and the public network. In March 1996, NOLIS was fitted with a menu system to make it easier for beginners.

Library Databases

The NAL databases, still under development, can be divided into three categories; bibliographic, legislative, and administrative information. This digitalization process has been underway since the 1980s and will continue into the future.

The bibliographic information files consist of the following: monographic catalog (MONO), Serial Publication Catalog (SERL), Index to Periodical Articles (KPA), Index to Korean Master's and Doctoral Theses (CTMD), Non-book Material Catalog (XXMF), Pamphlet Catalog (PAMF), Newspaper Catalog(NPMF), and the UN Material Catalog (UN Materials).

The legislative information available is the following: Full-text Database of National Assembly Records (FULL TEXT DB), National Assembly Record Index (NARI), Index to the Record of Inspection of State Affairs and Government Reports (AUDIT), Bill Information Retrieval System (BIRES), Inter-Parliamentary Affairs System (IPAS), Legislative Terminology (TERM), and the Bill Status Tracking System. Particularly, the full-text system of the National Assembly's Inspection of State Affairs and Government Reports consists of information collected from the Executive and other organizations to be used for inspections and legislative activities by the Members which are databased and available in full-text. The Reference Information Service System manages the reference questions made by the Members mainly to the Legislative Information Research and Analysis Department. It permits online management of reference questions and answers, retrieval of information available in full-text, authority file, statistics and overall management of these tasks. In addition, this system will be developed into a multi-tasking system.

And lastly, administration information available includes the following: the circulation system, gift and exchange system, electronic bulletin board, E-Mail, payroll file, telephone directory, and personnel record file.

GLIN Project

With respect to digitalizing printed materials, the NAL is digitalizing information on Korean legislation as a participant of the Global Legal Information Network (GLIN). This network provides a database of national laws from more than 35 participating countries around the world accessed from a World Wide Web server of the U.S. Library of Congress. Through this database, users may access legal abstracts in English and come full texts of laws in the language of the contributing country.

As a representative of this project in Korea, the NAL will continue to actively contribute Korean legislative information on this network.

Multimedia Center

At the Multimedia Center within the library, there is a CD-ROM Room, Optical File Room, and a Audio-Visual Room.

In the CD-ROM Room, bibliographic information and imaged data on CD-ROM are retrieved either using the Stand-alone disc form or the network.

To digitalize collected documents in the library, they are image-scanned at the center and can be retrieved, printed and faxed in the Optical File Room.

Important Developments in the Library

To adapt to the ever increasing requests of legislative information from the Members, the NAL has taken and continue to plan several steps to support the Members and their staff more promptly and efficiently.

Organization Chart

As the collection of books accelerated, the need for the Library to have a building of its own was called for. It was in 1987 when the Library could finally move into an independent building.

And as the request of information needed to support the legislative activities of the Members and staff increased yearly, the organization chart of the Library changed accordingly. Originally part of the Secretariat, the Legislative Information Research and Analysis Department was joined into the Library chart in March 1989and was strengthened with outstanding researchers as an independent department of its own for the first time.

Digital Library Project

The NAL is promoting a digital library project to follow the mainstream of the rapidly changing information environment and to efficiently provide information to the National Assembly Members and their staff. The most important and recent trend of the NAL would be the installation and testing of the full-text database system of the National Assembly Records which was planned with the government's fund for the promotion of the information superhighway network.

This system provides vernacular recordings of the Members, proceeding schedules, introduced and referred bills, committee reports, written question and answers and so on in full text which can be sorted and retrieved according to the name of the speaker, the bill's name and number, the organization being inspected, the subject, and key words.

Although the system is operating, it is being tested this year and will be available to the public in 1997 via information superhighway networks.

Future of the NAL

There is no doubt that the development of an institute requires continuous planning and revision to effectively adapt to the changes in this modern age of today. Research and participation in a project as immense and dynamic as the promotion of a digital library must be supported with a stable and ongoing fund. In our case, since the Library is being supported by the government to participate in the national information superhighway network, the fund needed to keep the project going is somewhat being provided.

And as the Members of the present 15th Constituent Assembly are more enthusiastic than ever about the legislative information provided by the Library, the future of the Library is bright. Because it is the acknowledgments from these primary users that motivates the development of a library and encourages the staff to strive in all positions to achieve their best in supporting the parliamentary.

Lastly, as the NAL is a national library being run by the tax of Korean citizens, the NAL carries the responsibility of continuously providing library service to them, not to mention users worldwide in today's global community.