APLA 14th Biennial Conference
Thursday 15th July 1999

CAN EXTERNAL DATABASES SATISFY MEMBERS' INFORMATION NEEDS?
Transcript of a discussion panel at the Brisbane APLA Biennial Conference, July 1999.

The CHAIRMAN: This session is one that I think will be of interest, not only to the Australian participants, but also to colleagues in other parliamentary libraries. Some of us have been dealing with the proposition (put in various subtle ways over the last year or two) that there really is no longer a need for parliamentary libraries, because of those wonderful external databases that any layperson can access for information whenever necessary. I have had some difficulties in espousing that assertion, and thought it was time that we attempted to give some sort of detailed examination to the proposition: "Can external databases satisfy Members' information needs?"

The panel will address that general question by way of an assessment of a number of specific related topics. The first of these will be led by two colleagues from the Queensland Parliamentary Library. Mary Seefried, Director of Research Publications and Resources, and Lynne Armstrong, Director of Information Management, will provide a brief overview of a number of electronic databases, examining what they currently offer and what they could ideally provide.

Howard Coxon, South Australian Parliamentary Librarian has kindly agreed to discuss the challenges posed by electronic publishing covering things like changes to data, updates, revisions, archiving, access, legal deposit - there is quite a lot there. Bruce Davidson, Victorian Parliamentary Librarian, has decided to talk about Members, and electorate officers with the necessary resources and skills to properly utilise external databases

Rob Brian, New South Wales Parliamentary Librarian, will talk about the extent to which parliamentary libraries offer significant electronic data. He will be followed by Nola Adcock, Deputy Head, Information and Research Service, Australian Parliamentary Library, who will raise some interesting issues, including: should parliamentary libraries be a gateway or a conduit to information sources held elsewhere, or should they collect and preserve data themselves? Are these mutually exclusive? To what degree should they concentrate on training, et cetera? Some of these matters may well overlap with Bruce Davidson's contribution.

Ms. SEEFRIED: Lynne and I were delegated this topic fairly recently, and after a little discussion we decided that we would turn it into a bit of a debate. I have taken the "pro" cause and Lynne has the "contra" side. My intention is to paint a utopian scenario, leaving it to my learned audience to determine how close this is to the real world.

First I wondered: what is a database? I asked my colleagues in the library, and they all came up with a different answer. In the end, I decided that it is just a collection of data. It is either bibliographic or non-bibliographic. Generally, it has an access tool. I put it to you that really we have always had them in our libraries in paper form, and they have been provided by external suppliers: it is nothing new. The only new thing about it, really, is that they are now computerised. You could think of a library itself as being one, rather large, bulky database, partly computerised and partly not. It follows, obviously, that an external database is one that is provided by an external provider.

We have had our own computerised database in this library for well over 20 years. In the commercial arena we started off with databases such as were provided initially by Dialog and others. You could say there were much earlier manual databases - Helga Alemson used the example of clay tablets earlier today. Yes, that was a database, and so was the Domesday Book, because it collected data together for particular purposes. APAIS (the Australian Public Affairs Information Service) was one of our most used databases at one time, in paper form. Now we just love it because it is computerised. Computerised, external databases range from the single subject, to the CCH-type ones, to the Internet itself. They range from citations to abstracts and full text.

The way that data is delivered has become a little bit eclectic. There are CD-ROM types for legal research: Butterworths and LBC, CCH; then there are the citation-only ones, such as Austrom from RMIT, which contains the APAIS database. We have single product CDs, like Encyclopaedia Britannica; and there are even single works as external databases on CD-ROMS. Some of those are now being provided by The Web, on line, such as AUSTLII, which is free. There are also databases identical to those mentioned, but delivered via a browser. Examples include Infotrac and First Search - the subscription-based ones.

Then again hybrids incorporating CD-ROM and Web delivery exist, such as those provided by LBC and Butterworths. These suppliers provide CD-ROMs with high-storage and searchable capabilities, updating the information through the Internet. UNSTAT is an example of a fairly expensive commercial product on the legislation side. The library still utilises databases accessed by telephone line and modem, such as AUSSTATS from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which we use quite a lot. Reuters still employs modem access, but heading towards Internet supply. The ABS service on The Web is not as good as their AUSSTATS modem-provided one. Of course, one can view the Internet itself as one huge database, though it does not have very good access tools. In my opinion the Internet is the real Year 2K problem.

What do all of these products offer? They offer increased accessibility. Overseas material like HMSO, House of Commons, Library of Congress, international government and legal documents, and legislation from all jurisdictions are all accessible. This has improved currency, particularly for the material from overseas. We are now able to access legislation from the House of Commons almost the day that it receives assent, certainly within 24 hours. That is a really fantastic service that we did not have before, and it allows us to give better service to our clients in terms of interstate and international comparative analyses. One of our Queensland Members said in yesterday's panel discussion that this was what he wanted.

Many of the products provide some degree of archiving. For example, APAIS on Austrom is archived back to 1984. It is not the complete collection, but it is a large collection, though it only offers citations. Some of the others go back about ten years. I think Infotrac, which is used by many libraries represented here, goes back five years or so. In some respects, that is adequate for particular types of information that we may need - the current and relevant material. We are not always looking for the historical research aspect. In my view, a 10 year range is a good period, because our experience is that the members want time-line material in the statistical area of about that age - maybe a couple of previous Governments back. APAIS on Austrom - I keep going back to that one, because we use it a lot - provides a large database indexed consistently over a great length of time. In the Queensland Parliamentary Library, we certainly have an equivalent product in our Concord system.

Same-day availability of digitised news texts has been a long time coming for us in Queensland, because we particularly wanted the Courier-Mail. We had an unsatisfactory arrangement for some years with the Queensland Newspapers' rather expensive and not always reliable QNIS database. Now it is a reality through AAP. Through our integrated systems, clients are able to have direct, 24-hour access and multi access at the same time when networked. The Internet is interactive potentially. You can actually get to the writer at times. I know for our research officers, when we first got out there on the Internet, the ability to actually email the author for more information was seen as a big plus. I think Lynne will say something about that, pointing out that there can be negative aspects as well.

Browsing capability - Infotrac gives you guidelines or inputs into other areas of similar interests. The possibility of integration of the desktop and the interactive --

Other advantages: -

* Maybe fewer subscriptions to individual journal titles, although we are probably not quite at that point yet.
* Indexing done by external providers instead of our own staff - a potential for reduced staff time.
* CD-ROM - large volume of data at very little costs: space savings.
* No filing of loose-leaf services - a great boon for CCH products for us.
* Generally cheaper housing issues.

One plus for us as professional librarians is that we will still need to adopt the same filtering techniques and employ trained information specialists no matter what the information sources. However, libraries and professional organisations are now providing data through indexed gateways. That's probably because of user needs - it's a way of providing collected gateways to the Internet. I know Nola Adcock was talking earlier about that in relation to her Internet resource-guides, etcetera.

These techniques will surely improve as the electronic revolution proceeds. I agree with remarks Kate Curr made during her presentation. Gradually the IT people have begun to realise that they should put in metadata and metatags - the sorts of things we have been doing under different names for hundreds of years as librarians. Things are gradually improving but they are not quite there yet. Some of the search engines on the Internet weight the hits by subject type, and ANZWERS provides limited searches to Australasian web material only. It is an automatic filter across the material. I have put in a bit of a plug for metatags and metadata, but effectively what is required is simple cataloguing of material documents, or citations of documents, that are on the Internet.

One paper at the On Line On Disk conference in Sydney last January was about the business entry point of the Commonwealth, which has developed an automated edition of metadata for all of their documents. In a sense that has provided that structural process within Government document management, which is almost like the HRM tool that Mike Middleton was talking about in his keynote address yesterday. We have all these names like "Dublin core" resource description embedded, etcetera, but at the moment - and I know Lynne is going to talk about it a bit more - only about 20 per cent of the Internet is indexed or using any sort of metatags at all.

Dependability depends on the provider and the manager of the database. Is it credible? Is it updated? Is there a quality control? Some of them we find very dependable. Some of the CD-ROM products are extremely dependable. However some law ones are questionable because they sometimes leave things out. I will now turn over to Lynne Armstrong who will provide a reality check on all that I have said.

Ms ARMSTRONG: Thanks, Mary. Like Mary, I believe that external databases are invaluable tools for parliamentary libraries and in meeting Members' needs. But to rely solely on external databases to satisfy those needs raises a number of day-to-day issues relating to user access, cost coverage, search effectiveness and ease of use. I would like to mention briefly seven quick points - all painfully obviously - which have been touched on in the last two days - what you could call a view from the floor.

The first issue is that of relying on external technical support and help facilities. That can have its upside as well as its downside. Emailing a user problem to an external host can be effective and swift, but it can also be frustrating if the host does not respond in time, or does not respond at all. A recent example of this was emailing an American host for some costings and technical details. It took several weeks to get any sort of answer. I got on to a Sydney agent. In the end, when I got both the American and Sydney figures, they were totally different. That was costly and delaying and it affected timeliness. Struggling with confusing, ambiguous and unfriendly screens without local support can be off-putting to both staff and clients, although it must be acknowledged that screen design has generally improved dramatically in the last few years. That gets back to what Mike Middleton referred to as the importance of the intermediary. Struggling with printing format and version inconsistencies, with no local help around, can also make blood pressures rise, particularly if the information request for a client is urgent. Of course, commercial software is improving all the time and incompatibilities are being resolved with each new release.

A second major issue relates to the reliability of technical links between local user and external host: the difficulties when remote local or even intermediary servers are down, when communication lines are unstable or overloaded, or ports are clogged up. Those things cannot be underestimated - what Helga Alemson referred to as "netquakes". There can also be delays because of public holidays or industrial disputes at processing sites on the other side of the world, which unfortunately can hold up processing and delivery of data. Our experience with Reuters and AAP for daily news clips has been rather chequered. In our case, it is essential for us to have a good scanning fall-back position. A related issue is unacceptably slow response times for whatever reason. It may take up to 40 minutes to download a large piece of legislation from an external source if there is congestion. Meanwhile, all the member wants is a copy of the legislation to be taken to the House. Obviously hard copy runs, or in-house databases of core material, still have a place in collections. I also mention problems in capturing, say, graphic elements within an HTML file when using certain browsers. Overcoming those problems can take significant staff processing time using file conversions or scanning technology.

A third issue is the importance of the tailored or filtered database for our clients. Getting the right mix of the parochial as well as the more global data to fulfil clients' information needs can be difficult using only external databases, although, slowly, local coverage is improving. I have an example of this. I have had to wrestle with Government departments to put important reports on their web pages. Only about 20 per cent of 1999 Queensland Government green or discussion papers have been available from their web sites this year. We often have to resort to scanning hard copy to get an electronic product. Some recent innovations by external hosts to allow user libraries to tailor or select their product ranges, like Infotrac, and the use of improved front ends and interfaces, are meeting some of those concerns.

There are also some difficulties relating to consistent, comprehensive coverage of some products provided by outside hosts. On many occasions, we have had to ring Reuters to remind them that they have not loaded the last two electronic versions of Business Review Weekly or that there are several articles in the Economist or the Melbourne Age that have not been included. It is often because non-salaried journalists have copyright complications with those hosts, and they are just not available.

A related issue is that of coverage of retrospective data. Although our clients are interested primarily in current materials, information dating back beyond 10 years is still often needed in the course of reference and research work, and often impossible to locate externally.

A fourth issue relates to the quality and diversity of commercial search engines. Many are limited in their indexing range. Some are 12 months behind indexing. A recent study published in the Nature journal last week by two computer scientists compares the success of searching the web by six leading engines. The authors claim that searching engines do not index sites equally, may not index new pages for months and no engine indexes more than 16 per cent of the web. They conclude that as the web becomes a major communications medium, the data on it must be made more accessible. As well as coverage, different searching software may mean that the user has to negotiate a bewildering range of different search strategies, let alone passwords and changing or obsolete cookies. This leads back to that training role of the intermediary.

A fifth issue relates to permanency of, and archival responsibility towards, important digital materials. Everyone is aware of the disturbing transitory nature of some very useful web material and sites. It is our policy to download that data where possible and make it searchable and accessible, particularly core collection material like party policies and media releases.

A sixth issue relates to cost, and the problems of negotiating complex and sometimes costly licensing agreements for numbers of concurrent users. Some hosts who have the monopoly on supply can shift prices dramatically upwards. We have had experience over the last 12 years with QNIS having the monopoly on the Courier-Mail full text and, within the last five years, changing their software to make it even more costly in terms of time. Being costed by the minute, the cost has been astronomical.

Finally, there are issues relating to computer privacy and confidentiality. The number of audit trails on client searches in external databases probably is underestimated. It could be an issue of growing concern if individual Members' log-ins and details ever become visible to interested parties.

The CHAIRMAN: Thank you Lynne and Mary. I am going to dispense with questions at this stage because we are running behind schedule, but there will be time for them later on. Can I ask Howard Coxon to proceed with his presentation?

Mr COXON: This subject really started me off down memory lane. In 1982, the University of Adelaide sent me on a study tour through the United States. The purpose of that study tour was to look at issues connected with the collection and maintenance of data held in electronic or machine-readable formats. I decided to go the United States, because everything happens in the United States: they must have the answers there if there were going to be problems in that area. I set about organising to see people. I suppose I thought that it would be libraries that would be addressing those kinds of problems. What I actually found was that it was not libraries at all: they were usually units within a university who might be conducting social surveys and other kinds of research of that nature.

So I found myself moving from campus to campus across the United States, popping into the library, really not having any useful discussions with people there, and talking to small groups of academics who were trying to struggle with the problem of retaining data that researchers left with them, and of keeping it current and available to people. In Washington, I went to the Bureau of Census and Statistics, an agency that had been in the forefront of maintaining machine-readable records. I found there people almost on the point of a nervous breakdown - as I say, this was the early eighties - wondering what to do about maintaining the records that they had. Do you remember those old computer cards? They had rooms and rooms full of those things. The computers that they were using were very basic. Obviously, things had moved on even by that stage, but they were looking for staff who could maintain the archaeology of a particular point in time so that they could run and maintain the data.

Having gone through that exercise, I realised that libraries were not really interested in the issue and that perhaps the issue was altogether too hard anyway. I think it was perhaps the early nineties when ACLIS set up a working party or a subcommittee to look at that same issue, since it was becoming more pressing as libraries were beginning to receive data in the non-paper format. The result of that particular committee's work was, I believe, a really rather feeble report, which again found the issue all rather too hard. It bore fruit perhaps, particularly for some individual libraries. It was going to be an issue, perhaps, for legal deposit libraries, which might receive data in formats, to which then the library would have to provide some form of access. At the same time, new formats were coming along, like CDs. People rushed into those. They presented management problems in libraries, too. I do not know whether anyone really addressed those issues satisfactorily.

When I was thinking about why not, I thought that the logic of this form of data was that it could be centralised and it could be communicated. My conclusion really has been that individual libraries are probably well advised to steer clear of many of those problems of housing and maintaining data and to rely on access through external sources and the originators of the data and other providers.

When Nick began this session, he suggested that perhaps there was some doubt about the future of parliamentary libraries. He thought they still had a role. I am sure they do have a role. I suspect in the future that we are looking towards - in light of what we have heard over the last few days about the use of the Internet by individuals and the pressure for the library to support that - our role may well be much reduced. Over the last few days I have also detected perhaps a defensive note about the need to create a role for ourselves. There is still a query in my mind about whether the maintenance of large volumes of data is an answer for parliamentary libraries. If I am going to come down on one side or the other in this debate, I am a believer in external databases, in using information that other people have produced and not in libraries trying to duplicate the information.

The CHAIRMAN: I think we have some time at this stage for a few questions on both the first and second presentations if anybody would like to raise any of the issues.

Mr BRIAN: We have talked about databases. Mary quite rightly pointed out that the book is a marvellous database. In New South Wales in recent months, we have had the case of Egan v. Willis and Egan v. Chadwick, which dealt with parliamentary privilege. The barrister who appeared for the Legislative Council sent all his references to the Clerk of the Parliaments, who referred them to me. I have spent many nights photocopying all the material that he needed for those two cases right up to the High Court from our own collection. This is a vast database, which sits in our basement, that has been collected, and carefully selected, for almost the last 160 years. I think we need to preserve that. That will not easily go away. A lot of it will be on acid-free paper. It will not go brittle. It will last. I think it is important that we maintain it.

In relation to the more recent information, if we accept Howard's point of view that we rely on the external providers, a lot of that information is by commercial providers who will maintain it only as long as there is a dollar in it. Once that dollar is no longer in it, they will probably wipe it. Suddenly we can be without any of those resources that we will need. That is my great worry. When I thought I was going to be speaking on that topic - it was my first pick, I think - I threw a few articles in a pile as I came across them and, on an odd moment, thought about it. One was called "Overload: it's a high-tech department" - an article by Alexander Stiller. It starts off:

In a temperature-controlled laboratory in the bowels of the vast new National Archives Building outside Washington, nearly 2 million square feet of futuristic steel and glass construction, an engineer cranks up an old Thomas A. Edison phonograph. A cylinder disk begins to turn and from the phonograph's large metal horn we suddenly hear the scratchy oom pah pah of a marching band striking up a tune of the Knights of Columbus parade in July of 1902.

Nearby sits an ancestor of the modern reel to reel tape recorder . . .

And so on - you get the picture.

I am sure that, perhaps as soon as five or ten years' from now, we will not be using the current technology to maintain all the information that is now stored in whatever electronic form - digital. We already have a problem with files in an early version of Word or WordPerfect that a modern computer can't deal with. What will happen to all that information? Who will maintain it? If we rely on the external provider, we may lose it. We may be in the same boat as we are with our classics: Sophocles is reputed to have written some 120 plays. We have only seven of them. The rest are lost. Perhaps that is a good thing. Perhaps it is best that we don't preserve everything. But, on the other hand, I think we are facing the same thing: we are in danger of losing vast amounts of vital information. We need to take some responsibility ourselves and maintain collections as librarians have done from time immemorial.

The CHAIRMAN: Rob, I think that was more a balancing comment than a question. One thing I would just briefly like to say is that Howard asked: should it be one or the other? I am not at all convinced that it should be a case of one or the other; I think the answer could be complementary, in that we are in a hybrid situation anyway. My concern is possibly not so much "Should there be a parliamentary library?" but "What is the role?" To me the role seems to be leaning more towards learning and training, and an interpolation interface between the user and the actual resource wherever it may be. Having now reached 4.30pm, by my reckoning we have 10 minutes for each of the next three people. Whether they take all of their allotted time on their topic or whether they cover what they want to say within that time will determine how many questions can be raised. Bruce Davidson is the next speaker.

Mr DAVIDSON: I will remind people here about what our question is. It is: can external databases satisfy members' information? My contribution addresses: "do Members and their electorate officers have the resources and skills to properly utilise these?" In the foregoing discussion I think I indicated that, at the moment, they don't. First, if we consider what is happening in Australia, where Members are and the facilities that they have, we will realise that a lot of them do not physically have the actual means to do it for a start. So the answer is: "No, they do not". If they are not linked up, they are not in the game; it does not matter what skills they have. We have to move down that path before they are even able to do it. We are actually thinking about the future here already. We probably need to think about the future.

One of the things that Mike Middleton started us off with was the need to know our client group. I think that is one of the things that we are experts at. We have a pretty good idea of how they use information and what their backgrounds are. I had a quick look at the electronic handbook for the Parliament of Victoria and considered Members' backgrounds, the sort of group that we serve and whether they would have the skills to do that right now. I like to think that the Parliament of Victoria is a cross-section of the community. To some extent, it almost is. You don't need a million-dollar campaign to get into the Parliament of Victoria. Consequently, we do have a fair representation of all the trades and professions, such as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers - well, not quite. In the occupations that they list before entering Parliament - and some of them list two - there is a range of shearers, teachers, wool classers, clerks, motor mechanics, et cetera. I do not think it is quite like the Congress in the US, where a different sort of person is elected. Possibly, this group of people is even different from those in the Commonwealth. About half of them are tertiary educated. Some of them are tertiary educated from a long time ago. Sixteen per cent have TAFE qualifications. About one-third of them have secondary qualifications. Some of those would be ageing qualifications as well. That is the snapshot. But we are about to have an election. When we have an election, one-third or a quarter will go. Among that third will be the old "shellbacks", the ones who were not prepared to adapt to the technology that the library was offering, because they know that they going at the next election. Invariably, they will be replaced by people who are much more information literate and IT literate.

So, as of now, the answer is: "No". After the next election: "Maybe". Certainly after the election after next, we will have a different group of people with a whole different view of using information. By then, those external databases might be easy to use and there might be some fairly wide adoption of their use. But at the moment - I think I made the point before - we do need to train members and we do need intermediaries.

At yesterday's panel session we had Members telling us about how they use the Queensland Parliamentary Library. I wrote down a quote, from Fiona Simpson I think, who said that she did not have the time or the skills. Those were the words that she used right there and then. The Member for Gladstone indicated clearly that it is her staff member who does the work for her, and uses the library. That prompted me to have a look at the position description for electorate office support staff in the Parliament of Victoria to see how we were recruiting those people. This is the current, just updated position description. There are specific areas of responsibility, which include office security, administration, responsibilities to the member, customer service and there is technology and information gathering. Under "technology" is "word processing as required using Microsoft Word; maintain spreadsheets using Microsoft Excel; receive faxes and emails." Under "information gathering" is "monitor daily and local newspapers for relevant and topical issues; collect and store press clippings if required." I don't think we are recruiting the right sort of person into the office - these are the support staff. We know that they are often the ones who will be actually seeking the information. To tell you the truth, they are not up to the task.

I will hark back to what Mike Middleton started us off with. He mentioned some themes. He talked about knowing our constituency and empowerment. I guess that is what we are talking about here. He touched on defining information literacy. That is one of the things that we could apply here as well. He talked about the librarian as the instructor. I think that is vitally important. That is one of the roles that we do have as both an intermediary and as an instructor. He also talked about the hybrid library. I think that is a fairly critical point in this discussion that is not to be overlooked, because we are a hybrid library. We are all offering more of our services over the 'Net. There are more and more of those databases available. Right now in the Parliament of Victoria, if you so wish, as a Member of Parliament, you don't have to worry about what's being offered to you or the expensive technology and even the training: you can just pick up the phone and ask the question. That means that we are running two services.

In the universities when they roll out a service, they often wind back the other one. I have not seen any winding back in parliamentary libraries. Right now, we are not winding back and we are not intending to wind back. The hybrid library is there. The tap is still turned on. While the tap is still turned on for the old-fashioned ring up and get the service, there will be members who do that. In answer to the question in the broadest terms - keeping it brief - Members and their staff are not equipped even to use the distilled, easy-to-use services that we are dishing up to them. I think that, for the most part, they have a long way to go before they will use external databases effectively. As we know, some of those databases are quite complex. That will be rectified with time as we have more and more IT and information literate people elected to the Parliament.

The CHAIRMAN: Thanks, Bruce - both for your useful information and for your succinct delivery. We have a couple of minutes for anybody who wants to comment.

Mrs ALEMSON: I agree with Bruce. I will follow up in terms of Members. Out there in the community many people are using commercial databases as specialists in the field of law or whatever, so they are specialising in using a limited number of particular tools. The Member is a generalist. As staff covering this wide spectrum of areas, we have to become au fait with so many different tools relating to so many different subject areas. That does impact, and possibly makes our role more important.

Mr DAVIDSON: That is a very good point. When I talk to people about the parliamentary library, they say, "Gee, you must have a lot of books on politics here." I say, "No, not really; we don't." That is because we all know that we have very general libraries. That is particularly so at the State level. We know that the laws that come out of the Parliament of Victoria are the laws that guide people in their day-to-day lives. I say to schoolchildren, "Do you think we have any books on dogs?" "Yes, we do. Why? Because we have a Dog Act." The point is that it is a very wide span of responsibility. It is not just a narrow span that you can come to grips with. We deal with every aspect.

The CHAIRMAN: Rob Brian is the next presenter. As you rightly allege, this topic was not your first choice. Thank you for going ahead anyway.

Mr BRIAN: I am asked to speak on "To what extent do parliamentary libraries offer significant electronic data?" I think we have been talking for the last two days about that sort of thing. We obviously do offer a lot of significant data. I do hope that we keep that data up to date with changing technology. I think we should take responsibility for what we offer. Of course, it varies from Parliament to Parliament whether it is the library or some other section of the Parliament. We all seem to have things like Hansard, sittings, committees and details on members. Some have policies. In NSW the Parliamentary Counsel gives us up-to-date Bills and Acts of Parliament as they are amended. We also have the electoral maps that we mentioned. All that material is available. I don't need to spend more time on it.

The next point Nick suggested was "The role of the Intranet - examples from different jurisdictions". Again, we have seen examples here of respective Intranets from nearly all the Parliaments, so I won't spend time on that. The next point is "To what extent do we make material available on CDs?" Certainly in NSW we have talked about maintaining the whole of Hansard. At the moment we have it from 1991. Should we maintain that on the Internet for evermore? It has been suggested that perhaps we should keep only the current and the last Parliament on line and put earlier Parliaments on CDs. But that sort of thing can change very rapidly as the cost of storage comes down, as we can compress data and so on. There may be no great benefit. If you are going to have it, it is probably better to have it on line than to have to load a CD and archive it that way. I think that debate will go on. It will keep changing from month to month as technology changes. I would not like to predict whether we will, in fact, ever cut a CD. Of course, I remember years ago someone quoted a figure of $15,000 to cut a CD. Now you can do it for $150. As things change, the answer to those sorts of questions may change as well.

Access to general and specialised Government and commercial databases has already been commented on by other participants. I agree that for the instant information that we need today, to have access to those sort of databases is obviously the way to go, rather than storing them in-house. If we can throw away our loose-leaf services and get the information on line, that is so much better. It is so much easier to search. We have links to other things. It is better, whether we do it or whether the members and their staff do it directly. Again, I agree with Bruce: we have to keep all those avenues open for the time being, because we are in this watershed situation in which things change, in which some people are right at the forefront and others, of course, will lag a long way behind and will never catch up with technology. As I pointed out this morning, if 70 per cent of people have never made a telephone call, if we take a global view, there are an awful lot of people who, in our lifetimes, will not even get near a computer to access any information.

Finally, there is the question of the Internet. Again, we have discussed that. The Internet is there. The Internet seems to me to be not so much like a library - I know it is sometimes called a "virtual library" and that is a total misnomer - it is more like a virtual bookstore where books are just shelved at random and not even subject classified. If you try to enter a bookstore and find readily available information on a topic, you will have great difficulty. If you go to a well-organised library, even if it has a card catalogue and is old fashioned, you will probably find the relevant information relatively quickly. The Internet is there. I think it is a tool to be used; it does not replace. I think I will come back. Our traditional libraries from clay tablets onwards will remain of value and need to be preserved as well as using the new technology.

The CHAIRMAN: You would understand, perhaps, that when I first drafted out these themes three months ago, I had no idea what papers would be delivered today. There are a couple of items among those I suggested to the panelists - and they were suggestions to extrapolate on - on which I wouldn't mind having a couple of words.

To what extent do parliamentary libraries offer significant electronic data? I think we have had some pretty good demonstrations in terms of Kate Curr showing us the newspaper clippings in NSW; Helga Alemson demonstrating the sorts of data that we have on our databases in Queensland and Bruce Davidson with the assistance of Gail Dunstan this afternoon also showing in terms of the Victorian library what significant data is held by the parliamentary library itself as opposed to external data sources. Usually this is information that is either of a specific nature that we know to be useful or vital to the Members, or it is something that you cannot afford to risk being unable to access reliably from external databases, in terms of the glitches mentioned by Lynne Armstrong. It is material that you need right away. I do think that the various parliamentary libraries already have quite a significant store, which may or may not be available elsewhere. In many cases, it is not available elsewhere.

I think Rob Brian mentioned at some time during the last two days that he would like to make his newspaper clipping service more widely available. The main reason for that was that nobody else collects them under subject headings. The same applies to us, too. Lots of requests come from the Queensland University of Technology next door. They ask: "Please could the students use your collection?" We have to say the same thing: unfortunately copyright prevents that. Yes, I think that is one avenue where we do have significant data. I think the other one, even though we don't create the data, is the CDs that we hold. We have seen instances in the on-line demonstrations where some of the libraries - and I am sure the Commonwealth could probably triple it or quadruple these numbers - have maybe 20, 30, 40 significant CDs available on-line to their clientele at all times of the day and night, for example the Encyclopaedia Brittanica. That is starting to amount to quite a significant in-house resource. Of course, it may also be available alternatively from a commercial source. I think that the parliamentary libraries already do have quite significant data. Certainly we can supplement that with material from elsewhere. I have probably taken up too much time on that. Does anybody else have any comment?

Ms SEEFRIED: I agree with Nick. We have actually been talking about two issues here. One was user needs. We have all been creating our internal databases for some time now in various ways. We have already started to develop in different ways the databases we produced 10 years ago. One of the things that has allowed us to do it is the browser technology. It has really provided a huge opportunity for us to integrate and perhaps become the hybrid library.

Collection development is now going to become more and more important. Which resources do we take from where? What do we integrate with what we have already, or what we are producing internally? If we keep on focussing back on the user needs, like we did yesterday having the focus group with the members asking them what THEY want, I think we will stay on track. It is not a matter of saying, "We won't have any external databases" or "we will have only internal ones." It is a matter of mixing and matching all the time and refocussing them all the time.

The CHAIRMAN: No more hands are moving, however the hands on the clock are. Nola Adcock has the unfortunate role of being the final speaker. I hope we have not traversed the territory you agreed to cover, but I am sure you will have a thoughtful contribution to make.

Ms ADCOCK: My topic - and like other presenters, it was not my first choice - was "Should parliamentary libraries be a gateway or conduit to information sources held elsewhere, or should they collect and preserve data themselves for their clients?" Mary has already asked: are these mutually exclusive? I guess the thing that came to my mind when I was thinking of that was: above all we provide a service. We make judgements about how we will deliver that service. So many of the judgments we make and the basis on which we are making those judgments, is to do with accessibility. How do you provide the service that your clients want, to be able to get hold of the materials that are the basis of that service? Do you provide and collect materials in case you need them or just in time to get hold of them?

I think Nick's point about significant electronic data is that, in 99 per cent of the cases, what we acquire or organise is not unique, but it is the way we shape and organise it to make it easily accessible and retrievable so that we can provide a service so our clients can get access to that material. Bruce made a comment that things are changing. At this point in time, we are very much in a hybrid situation. Certainly our client survey pointed us in the direction that we will need to be moving, but it is not an either/or situation; it is very much offering services at this particular point in time, but acknowledging that we need to have flexibility and be able to move to a situation of more independent access for our clients.

To what degree should we concentrate on training/facilitation? I think Ros and I covered some of that in our paper. Certainly it is an area in which again our clients are asking us to provide assistance. They see us as being a repository of expertise. They want to be able to do things directly themselves, but they do not have the skills. We have to be able to assist, shape and train. That is the sort of thing that Victoria is doing by getting out into electorate offices. We are doing an awful lot of that too in one-on-one sessions in Members' officers with their staff, talking them through and giving them that training. We are very much in the middle of providing a service that meets requirements now, but needing to think strategically for the future. None of those things is mutually exclusive. We are doing both. We will need not only to continue to do that but also to make sound judgments - given that our dollars are finite - about how we will be able to continue to do that cost effectively.

Electronic sources, access and ways of organising material gives us enormous flexibility to be able to do it creatively and to be able to provide different sorts of interfaces. Mike Middleton commented that there are more and more ways now that the clients can be provided with their view of the world - the way they want to see it; the sorts of issues that they want to come to terms with - through selective interfaces. All those things are possible. From what we have seen with the presentations here, it seems that we are all thinking very creatively along those lines and need to continue to do it. I hope we continue to challenge and mutually stimulate each other's ideas in the way that I think these last two days have.

The CHAIRMAN: Thank you Nola. Do we have any more general comments from anybody on anything that we have covered today, or are we all talked out?

Ms SEEFRIED: Do you mind if I just read out something that my colleague Eve Francis found for me when I asked her about databases. She kept emailing me things.

The CHAIRMAN: Provided it is brief.

Ms SEEFRIED: She has found that there is a new book - it has just been put out by MIT press - called Information ecologies: using technology with heart. I don't know if anybody has this book or heard about it. It is by Bonny Nardi and Vicki O'Day. The book review states -

Librarians are a keystone species -

I guess they are anthropologists or environmentalists -

within the information ecology. Librarians play a key role not only for themselves, but are also a link around which other species i.e. researchers function. If the Librarians disappear, other users of information will suffer. They provide some excellent examples on how librarians, particularly reference librarians, operate and why those librarians cannot be replaced by software. The authors focus on how librarians humanise technology for others while using it expertly for themselves.

Maybe that contains some ideas that we have been tossing around.

NOLA: One of the people quoted by Ros Membrey in her paper was the facilitator for that. It is very interesting to read. You don't actually have to buy the book. You can get access to the text on the Internet.

The CHAIRMAN: Helga, I think you had one last comment.

Mrs ALEMSON: We have been looking at the process of going from print towards electronic databases. I think it was interesting the work you, Nick, were involved in using the new technology to bring back an old item in tatters and restore it. It was not something that was done automatically, that anyone out there could do with the technology. It required a lot of editing work and dedication. I think it is important to remember those two things: the dedication and the application; the use of the tools. We can go both ways - from giving up print technology but using the new electronic technology to restore also what was formerly in print.

The CHAIRMAN: I think those of us who have seen the British Library where they have the Domesday Book and others in imaged form permitting viewers to turn the virtual pages over by just touching a screen - the virtual library - may relate to those concepts.

Having listened carefully to what has been said by everybody here today, it seems to me that the general consensus is that, to perform effectively and efficiently for their primary clients, the Members, Parliamentary Libraries should both collect and maintain essential data, including value-added information of special significance, to ensure ready and confidential access to their clients. They should also provide their clients with expert assistance in accessing electronic data held outside the library by commercial, non-profit and governmental organisations. In other words, as I think has been said before, it is not a case of "Sydney or the bush": we are going to have to learn to live with both in this hybrid library situation for some time. Somehow I doubt that libraries will totally disappear as the years pass: they will change; they will evolve. I think librarians will also be in that same position

At this stage of proceedings, as our Conference draws to an end, I would like to say to you all "Thank you very much for participating in this". Could you please express your appreciation to these people for their contributions to this discussion? Thank you. It was not an easy task to have foisted upon them, and as some have made clear, the topics they spoke on were not necessarily their first choice. However that did not prevent them from providing us all with some thought-provoking observations.

On a wider canvass, I would like to thank you all for your participation over the past two days, which has made this Conference both memorable and successful. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to be able to host this meeting, which is in fact the third one held in Queensland. I will now hand over to our President, Margaret McGeehan, to wind up proceedings. Thank you all once again.