A combined parliamentary library and research service: changes and challenges over thirty years

Baines, Priscilla

IFLA Council and General Conference / .
(ReLIS:jul:juljin:6663)

Abstract:

It is customary when you grow older to look back and reflect how much better everything was in one’s youth, but when I started to think about this lecture I quickly concluded that I had very few real regrets about how things used to be. Indeed, the more I reflected the more conscious I became that almost all the changes that I have seen in the world of parliamentary libraries and research services have been for the better. It is not that we did that badly when I joined the House of Commons Library as an agricultural economist early in 1968, but in practical terms we could do far less so our horizons were much more limited and we were correspondingly less ambitious. Today, there is still plenty of scope for us to do more, and to improve what we already do, but in almost all respects our users are getting a substantially better service than they did when I first arrived at Westminster. It has been a period of continuing development and growth, driven by the possibilities that technology has offered and increasingly, in recent years, by the changing requirements and expectations of our users. In some ways, it is difficult to say which has been the more important driver but as we are essentially service organisations I think it is appropriate to start by looking at our users, their needs and how those needs have changed.

Creation: 2004
Keywords: Bibliotecas parlamentarias ; Centros de documentación

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