Our Annual Report records our achievements and progress in relation to our Action Plan for the last year.

Read our Action Plan for the past year (2017/18) to see what we set out to achieve.

We are now working towards the objectives on our current Action Plan for 2018/19.

If you have questions about our work, suggestions about what you would like us to work on, or you would like to help us, please contact one of the members of the Standing Committee.

Results

These are the activities that were completed during the year:

1. Stage the Section’s annual IFLAPARL satellite meeting

This year’s IFLAPARL pre-conference was held was held in Kuala Lumpur’s Convention Centre on the 24th of August.  The Section organised a one-day 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 from around the world.  Participants learned about the work of the Malaysian Parliamentary Library and Research Service and there was a presentation on Understanding our clients’ changing needs. They also had the opportunity to share their experience through group work in an interactive workshop on Ethics checklists for Parliamentary research & library services.  This took forward the work from the 2017 pre-conference on developing and sharing guidance on this topic. 

2. Organise 2018 WLIC sessions

The Section held its own session – Transforming Library & Research Services for Parliamentary Impact – an interactive session on how parliamentary research services and libraries transform their services to adapt to changing customer expectations and how they innovate to find new and more efficient ways of meeting changing customer needs.  It also cooperated with other IFLA sections to arrange a popular knowledge café on how continuous learning can prepare information professionals for the future, as well as a session with government libraries on evidence-based policy making and supporting UN sustainable development goals.  While our former Chair, Lillian Gassie, gave a very interesting presentation on the use of the Guidelines for Parliamentary Research Services in a session on impact of recently approved IFLA standards.

3. Communication to members

Two issues of the Section’s newsletter were published (February and July 2018), with a combined total of 19 pages of content.  And special thanks go to our colleagues in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies who are translating our newsletters into Spanish, increasing the accessibility of the content to a wider range of section members.

In addition, all the Section’s web pages were reviewed, their content updated and broken links were fixed.  Reports and presentations from the 2018 WLIC and satellite meeting were published.  This ensures we are ready for the transition to the new IFLA web CMS.

4. Facilitate discussion on best practice and standards for ethics in parliamentary libraries and research services

The SC member leading this project used the feedback from last year’s pre-conference to create a series of draft checklists, which could help individual services to identify issues and risks and take action where they find it appropriate and possible.  These checklists were published on the website in advance of the pre-conference as well as circulated to all attendees and formed the basis of the interactive workshop.  Feedback from the workshop, along with completed checklists that have been returned, and further online consultation are being used to revise the current drafts.  Final versions of the checklists will be published at the 2019 pre-conference.