No. 116, October 2000

APLAP Conference held in Tokyo

The Conference of the Association of Parliamentary Librarians of Asia and the Pacific (APLAP) was held in Tokyo on October 2-5, 2000. The Tokyo Conference, which the National Diet Library hosted, was the sixth biennial meeting of the Association, previous venues being Seoul, Islamabad, Bangkok, Canberra and Manila. 

The objective of the APLAP is to enrich parliamentary services through cooperation among member libraries. The theme of the Tokyo Conference was "The Parliamentary Library: Research and Information services in the New Era." Thirty-four participants from twenty-two parliaments* exchanged experiences and had intensive discussions on how they could enhance services for their respective legislatures in the years to come. 

The substantial part of the Conference started with the presentations by guest speakers. Dr. TAKAMI Katsutoshi, Professor, School of Law, Hokkaido University, delivered a keynote speech entitled "The Role of Parliament and the Parliamentary Library in the New Century," (Summary of the speech is carried in this issue) and Mr. Patricio ARANDA TORRES, Director, Library of Congress, Republic of Peru, made his speech titled "Democracy Links: Parliamentary Information Services". 

Working sessions and business meetings were held on the subsequent days. Sixteen country papers were read in working sessions which were devoted to sub-themes: "Services for Members and information technology," "Development and enhancement of services in the New Era," and "Staff in the future." In the general business meeting, new executive committee members of APLAP were elected: President - Mr. Ramesh Chander AHUJA (India), Vice President Asia - Ms. Maria Fe S. ABELEDA-ROBLES (Philippines), Vice President Pacific - Ms. Roslynn MEMBREY (Australia), Secretary - Takenori HORIMOTO (Japan), and Treasurer - Ms. Sait Poh "Ruby" CHEAH-Khoo (Singapore/reelected). There were also social programs, including a reception hosted jointly by the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President of the House of Councillors. 

The next conference of APLAP will be held in Ankara, Turkey, in September 2002. The theme of the Ankara Conference is "The role of the parliamentary library in enhancing democracy in the digital age." The key to democracy is an effective legislature and the key to an effective legislature is information. Parliamentary libraries must do their best to provide information and research services to the legislature, and to disseminate information of the legislature to the public, utilizing the latest technology. 

* Australia, Australia (NSW), Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cook Islands, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kiribati, Korea, Micronesia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Vietnam