This year’s pre-conference of the IFLA Section on Library and Research Services for Parliaments (IFLAPARL) was held in Kuala Lumpur’s Convention Centre on the 24th of August. The Parliament of Malaysia was unfortunately unable to host the pre-conference due to recent elections. As an alternative, the Section organised a pre-conference – themed ‘Transforming parliamentary libraries and research services to meet changing clients’ needs‘ – in conjunction with the main congress. It was well attended, with over 100 participants, and offered an opportunity for colleagues from the Malaysian Parliament to attend and present their work.

The session also included a workshop on parliamentary research and library service ethics – with the aim to continue work on developing a series of checklists to offer guidance on ethical issues to individual services – a presentation on understanding clients’ needs from Steve Wise and an address from Donna Scheeder, former IFLA president. As the IFLAPARL pre-conference was cut short this year, the Section additionally organised informal roundtable meetings to allow more time to discuss common issues. Among the topics featured were research product design, evaluating impact of parliamentary library and research services, and use of social media. These meetings were popular and provided a great opportunity to network and exchange views.

 

Presentations;

 Ethics workshop discussionsEthics workshop discussionsInformal networking sessions