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This paper discusses the implications of the ever-developing provision of online government information resources to clients of the New South Wales Parliamentary Library. It outlines the ways in which providing access to government information has changed over the last three years or so by providing examples of government information resources that were once primarily delivered in a traditional paper-based physical format, and the way in which this has rapidly changed so that a range of new online government resources supplement, and in a growing number of instances, supersede this traditional format.
Rather than being only a repository for physical sources of government information, the New South Wales Parliamentary Library has found it necessary to act as a Internet or perhaps ‘online information traffic cop’, directing our clients to the growing online sources of government information on the Internet. This has been essential to ensure our Library continues to provide an efficient, useful service which actively directs our clients to government resources which may never be held by the Library in any physical format. This is done proactively by promoting to our clients an Internet links page which focuses heavily on the information requirements of a client who often is wearing a number of hats — parliamentarian, legislator, government or shadow minister, policy maker, politician, political activist, constituency representative, overseer of the Executive. We aim to point them in the right direction so that these clients find government information on the Internet relevant to this unique and somewhat varied role.
Our library also has to respond to requests for government information, and this paper considers the ways in which the library staff attempt to locate government information on the Internet. In many instances staff are unaware of the existence or exact location of specific government information online. Experience in locating traditional government publications assists with this task of locating information on the Internet. Consequently, this paper also briefly acknowledges the value of search engines and of a whole of government approach to government information on the Internet, and the way in which this will hopefully assist us all to find our way around an information labyrinth in which the best navigators can get lost.
The New South Wales Parliamentary Library was established in 1840. It is the oldest of the several parliamentary libraries in Australia, and is also one of the oldest official libraries in the country having a continuous administrative history. Each Australian parliament and territory legislature has a library service. In brief, automation milestones in the library’s history include the purchase of the Library’s first PC in 1986, and overall automation of Library operations culminated in the launching of our Automated Parliamentary Library Information System (APLIS) during the Library’s sesquicentennial year in 1990. The last two years have seen the Library reach a point where we provide access to the Library’s catalogue and a number of digital collections (newspaper clippings, research publications, electoral maps and data) over an intranet across not only the Parliament in Macquarie Street but also via a wide area network to Electorate Offices and staff across the whole state.1
What we see with the New South Wales Parliamentary Library is a library which has for over 150 years provided publications in a traditional format: paper. The management of the Library’s collection has always had a strong emphasis on official publications. Considering our primary clients are Members of Parliament and their staff, Government Publications are of special importance. As stated in the Library’s history on the Library’s home page, a separate section in the Library ‘traditionally selects, acquires, catalogues, classifies, processes and binds these publications.’ This highlights the way in which government information resources for most of the Library’s history have primarily been delivered in a traditional paper-based physical format. In just a few years this scenario has rapidly changed whereby online government resources on the Internet supplement, and in growing instances, supersede this traditional format.
Our primary clients are Members of Parliament who traditionally require timely, current information from a number of paper based and online sources. The Library also plays an important service role in providing an information service not only to Members of Parliament, their staff and electorate offices throughout the state, but also importantly to the parliamentary institution including the clerks, committees staff and Hansard. Government publications are an important information resource for Members of Parliament and other library clients, such that the Library maintains Government publications as a separate collection arranged primarily by department to facilitate access to related physical publications. The Library has had an online catalogue for eight years which is used by both staff and clients as a tool to locate these printed publications in the library. In short, as in most libraries, the role of the reference librarians, when requested, is to locate relevant information from both paper and online sources, using internal and external catalogues and indexes, and to provide this information to our clients.
One of the advantages of being a traditional paper-based library is that we know where to find information since we are the ones who put it there, and it is located within a library classification scheme. Primarily due to volume, the best Internet search engine cannot group information in this highly structured, hierarchical way. In many ways the library as seen through the eyes of our clients was once the sole custodian of government information. It is important, however, not to see the library solely as a place which stores material. This relies on a traditional view which sees the library as a place rather than as a tool or mechanism which links clients to information no matter where that information resides or in what format it exists. We have a role in linking clients to government information regardless of where it is located. The Library via the Internet can now provide access points to government information without our clients having to visit the Library, and this defined physical collection. This in no way ignores the importance of the large physical collection which exists, is still growing and is still greatly used and valued by our clients and librarians alike.
Traditionally, our clients, in short, are pushed for time so that:
In the same way that our clients have not got time to get a government annual report from a shelf and photocopy it, they have not got the time to locate the information on the Internet and print it out.
I once overheard a reference librarian on the phone to a colleague suggesting that the Internet had de-skilled reference librarians. I see this as a narrow-minded view of the Internet. I think this also assumes that the Internet is easy to use and that, despite the volume of information on the Internet, search tools are accurate or specific enough to find this information. Librarians have hands-on search experience with online catalogues, indexes, databases, CD-ROMS, general experience locating government information, and general experience with PCs and email which are all transferable skills applicable to navigating and locating government information on the Internet.
There is an opportunity, on the one hand, for libraries to use the Internet to complement their services, but, maybe more importantly, to think of it as an opportunity for libraries to complement the Internet. Librarians possess a range of skills and experience with searching and accessing information which is highly applicable to searching for information on the Internet. For example, judgements concerning which government department is likely to have published a particular report still have to be made when searching the Internet, and come from years of experience in searching, locating and using paper-based government publications. After years of working at the Library, the reference librarians possess a unique and somewhat specialised knowledge of government information regardless of where it is located.
The Internet is just another tool librarians are expected to understand and use when completing inquiries for clients of the New South Wales Parliamentary Library. The Library’s reference inquiries have not been noticeably reduced since the rise of the Internet. They have probably risen. A common question ‘Where do I find this information on the Internet?’ is not much different from ‘Where do I find this information in the library?’ ‘Could you get me some information on the banana industry?’ now means using the Internet as a reference tool in conjunction with a range of other paper and electronic resources. In our Library, the Internet is a reference tool which complements other reference resources rather than just one which competes against them. The Internet can also allow librarians to spend more time doing higher-level things like synthesising information more for our clients. In this way, hopefully, the Library and our staff complement the Internet.
I completed my Postgraduate Diploma in Information Science at the end of 1993. I was recently discussing the phenomenon that is the Internet with a colleague who did this same postgraduate diploma and now works at the State Library. Remembering that 1993 is just over five years ago, neither of us can recall actually using the Internet during this course or it being part of the information studies curriculum for this course. In a mere five years it has become an integral part of the way in which the New South Wales Parliamentary Library operates. If the Internet is down for 10 minutes, I undoubtedly will get a call from a reference or research service staff member inquiring as to its availability.
Over the past three years the Library staff and our clients have increasingly been able to access the following sorts of information via the Internet:
In terms of access, the Internet has been a liberating medium. In many instances we can now access information, particularly from overseas, which may have once taken hours, days or weeks to receive in a paper-based format. A government department program, media release or report can be located even if the Library is closed. It also overcomes problems of distance. All electorate offices in New South Wales have access to the Internet and have 24-hour access to the Parliament’s intranet.
The way by which we have attempted to address provision of information to our clients is by ourselves publishing on the Internet a links page focusing on the sorts of material that is useful to Members of Parliament in New South Wales. The Parliament has had its own home page since mid-1996. It is interesting to note that many of the positive comments we get about our links page are also from the public, namely academics and students who use our site as a gateway to parliamentary, political and government information on the Internet. Larger legislative libraries such as the Ontario Legislative Assembly and Congressional Research Service have done similarly on both their intranet and Internet sites.2
Since our Library has a very defined set of users, we have been able to create an Internet index which focuses on the specific needs of Members of Parliament and their staff, at http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/gi/library/liblinks.html (see Figure 1).
We aim to synthesise a specific set of resources into broad subject groups relevant to this client group. Table 1 lists these subject groups.
| Subject group | Governments covered | Subject coverage |
| Politics and government resources | Federal, state and international | Links to Australian political parties and organisations, international political parties, Federal and state governments and government departments and agencies, election information. |
| Parliaments and the Executive | Australian and international | Links to Australian and overseas parliaments and legislatures, parliamentary affairs and Executive government. |
| News-based resources | Includes the Sydney Morning Herald site, the Australian News Network, ABC News Bulletin, CNN Interactive, Reuters Online, The Times etc. | |
| Current hot issues | Currently includes Federal election, GST, 1997/98 New South Wales redistribution, state and Federal budgets, Australian Constitutional Convention, electricity privatisation, the State Revenue High Court (Constitution) Decision, the Police Royal Commission Report and child protection issues, immigration and One Nation, Wik and native title, euthanasia, gun control, the 2000 Olympics and Internet censorship. | |
| Law and legislation resources | Australian and international | Law resources including Commonwealth, state and overseas legislation, Australasian Legal Information Institute etc. |
| Library home page | Includes the Library’s compendium of New South Wales parliamentary and political facts; and summaries of the Library’s research publications. | |
| General information resources | Australia and international | Includes resources such as the World factbooks, Australian general reference information, Internet encyclopaedias, phone books, ABS, Internet glossary etc. |
| Other library services and resources | Australian Parliamentary Library, National Library of Australia, ANU, State Library of New South Wales etc. |
The establishment of this page is a collaborative effort and was established and continues to be maintained via suggestions from staff and clients. Initially we collected copies of all the bookmark files from a cross section of the reference and research staff which were merged, and individual links then were organised into broad subject categories. It now relies heavily on input from Library staff for adding new sites and discarding the links which constantly move one step to the left or disappear from a site.
We have introduced and reminded Members and staff of this page in a number of ways. The Library runs Internet training sessions for the Parliament where Members and their staff are introduced to this page as a primary access point or gateway to information on the Internet. Whenever we add a page to our ‘Hot Topics’ area, or whenever major government publications such as budget papers are made available on the Internet, we inform all the Members, their staff and electorate offices using email.
One of the benefits of the Internet has been the opportunity for the Library to make a set of specialised resources available to the public. While the Parliamentary Library concentrates most of its resources to providing a service to Members of Parliament, the Internet, almost by default, has enabled us to deliver a service to the public. This service is delivered in the form of the Internet links page by providing an organised gateway to current issues, political, government and parliamentary information in Australia and overseas. Based on feedback, our ‘Hot Topics’ pages and ‘Compendium of Parliamentary Facts’ are widely referred to by members of the public.
There are two major ways by which we attempt to locate government information on the Internet. The first is intuitively, by making value judgments concerning from which government department relevant information is likely to be obtained. Some Commonwealth and state government sites accessed are listed in Table 2.
| Site | URL | Description |
| Politics and government links: State home pages and departments | http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/gi/library/liblinks.html | This is a page the Library maintains on our Web site which includes links to pages listed in Table 3. |
| Australian Government’s Entry Point at the National Library Web site | http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/ | Gives access to Australian Commonwealth Government, Australian state and territory governments, and Australian local governments |
| Australian Commonwealth Government entry point | http://www.fed.gov.au/ | |
| Departments and agencies page | http://www.fed.Gov.au/n_index3.htm |
The second method of locating information on the Internet is obviously using both general Internet and site-specific search engines. In terms of general Internet searching, we list approximately 10 Internet search tools or indexes on our site on an Internet ‘Search page’ at http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/gi/library/liblinks.html, shown in Table 4.
| Search tool | Description |
| Yahoo! Australia and NZ | Search the Internet by indexed categories |
| WebCrawler | A simple yet powerful Internet keyword search tool |
| Alta Vista | Claims to give access to the world’s largest Web index |
| HotBot | Ability to limit search by date and country |
| Anzwers | Internet search system designed for Australian and New Zealand users |
| Web Wombat | Australian-based search engine |
| AusIndex | Another Australian based search engine and index |
| EBIG Encyclopedia Britannica Internet Guide | |
| Search.com | Choose one of the 11 top Net search engines |
| Dogpile | A multi-engine search tool |
| Browser-based Internet search button | Links to a range of search sites such as Lycos, Magellan from Netscape or Micosoft sites. |
Generally among our staff and clients, I have noticed a preference for AltaVista in terms of ease of use, ability to perform relatively specific searches simply by using quotation marks, relevancy of ranked hits, and ability to limit searches to Australia and domain names if necessary. Searching by domain name or URL in AltaVista for purposes of limiting searches to government sites is quite simple yet powerful.
For example:
greenhouse url:gov.au
cryptosporidium giardia url:nsw.gov.au
"greenhouse gas*" url:gov.au
In some cases we find that this method of domain-name searching locates more relevant government hits than using individual search functions on state government Web sites themselves. Of course this all depends on pages being comprehensively indexed by these general search indexes. Coordinated, comprehensive, across-government search engines would be invaluable in ensuring government information is easily located and retrieved. A publications search or comprehensive index on both state and Commonwealth sites will also become essential as more and more government publications are made available on the Internet.
An interesting sideline to the provision of online information on the Internet is that this provision has become technology-dependent. Most of us know how to use the physical medium that is a book, journal, press release, Hansard etc. We pretty much understand how to pick it up off the shelf, open it up, turn pages, jump pages, move it closer or further from the eyes to increase or decrease print size, how to close it. After years of doing this, these are all intuitive tasks. This becomes a bit different when we start talking about viewing information on the Internet using a browser, plug-ins, viewers, helper applications, PDF files, word files, text files, image files etc. The Library has had to invest a lot of time not just primarily installing browsers, readers, plug-ins etc., but in explaining how to perform these simple tasks as outlined above. We have had to spend a lot of time explaining these simple points. Turning a page in Acrobat Reader, zooming in and out, explaining how to print individual pages, how to print out in landscape, how to print out a frame, how to open a page in a new window, how to save files, how to bookmark them, what the right mouse button does, how to save a picture. Extended periods of reading from a screen poses problems in itself to the point where our printers work overtime. I seriously doubt that there has been a drastic reduction in paper use at Parliament as a result of information being accessed electronically on the Internet. We spend considerable time fixing up network printers, answering questions about preferences in Netscape Navigator, explaining that Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer are software and are not the Internet itself, that the Internet won’t work from your laptop if it is not connected to a network. A rather complex dimension has been added to the relative simple task of reading. And this applies as equally to the Library staff as much as it does to our clients. The ins and outs of the Internet are in many cases as new to Library staff as they are to our clients.
We also have to be careful not to limit access to information available on the Internet. We have had to be careful to not only assume that everybody has access to the Internet but also, and this is probably more the case, not to assume that our clients want to access information in this way. The Internet (or computers generally) can sometimes limit access to information. A PC can quickly make a person feel a bit threatened or inept if they do not know how to use it or are not comfortable in using it. Generally, if a client asks for information and it is on the Internet we continue to provide this information in printed format. We encourage use of the Internet but we certainly do not insist our clients use it.
Part of our role, I believe, is also to correct some of the Internet misconceptions among our clients, namely that ‘everything’ is on the Internet. We often have to remind clients that this is definitely not the case. One factor sometimes worth mentioning when someone spends hours looking for some specific information on the Internet and cannot locate it is for them to consider ‘Is it even on the Internet?’ An example of this is when organisations regularly publish indexes of items for sale rather than placing the information itself on the Internet.
I always remind clients in Internet training that there are still these great information storage devices which hold megs and megs of information called books, reports, journals and newspapers which are available in the Library; and that there is at least 150 years worth of this information which has existed in the Library long before the rise of the Internet. We also have to remind clients that there is no body which oversees the veracity or accuracy of information on the Internet and to always question the source from where information is obtained. This sort of questioning of Internet material has become another role for our Library staff in ensuring they continue to provide accurate and reliable information to our clients. We must continue evaluating the reliability of the source from where information is obtained.
Use of the Internet, or more specifically an Internet browser, has actually had unplanned benefits for the Library in terms of providing a familiar interface to users when they use our new online Library services. Our Library catalogue and a number of digital collections are now presented to users using a Web-based interface. We do not have to reteach them the basics of clicking on links in browsers, what Acrobat Reader is or how to print out information from the Library catalogue. In this way we have actually invested in the skills acquired by our clients in using the Internet over the last three years.
Given that we have come so far in just a few years, I am sure a lot of the problems and bugs will be ironed out as clients and librarians become more and more familiar with the Internet, especially as technology improves in such large leaps and bounds. It does not seem too ridiculous to suggest that we might have to teach the library clients of the future how to locate and read a book well after they have mastered finding their way around the Internet.