No. 135, February 2004 | National Diet Library

National Diet Library Newsletter

No. 135, February 2004

Mutual Visit Program between the National Diet
Library and the National Assembly Library of Korea

visitors from the nal
Dr. Chung (left) and Dr. Kim (second from the left) of the NAL,
meeting with Mr. Kurosawa (right), the Librarian of the NDL

A mutual visit program with the National Assembly Library (NAL) of Korea was held from December 1 to 7, 2003 at the Tokyo Main Library of the National Diet Library. Two staff members of the NAL, Dr. Yoo-Hyang Kim, Legislative Research Officer, Legislative Research Division 1, and Dr. Hwan Kyu Chung, Legislative Research Officer, Legislative Research Division 2, visited Tokyo for the program.

The mutual visit program between the two libraries started as a training program for which each library sent to the other one staff member for one month. In 2000, the NDL dispatched its staffer to Korea and it invited a staffer of the NAL in 2001. (For details, please see here.) After two years, the two libraries reviewed the results and agreed in August 2003 to restart the program in a new style, that is, two staff members visiting the partner library every two years by turns to report and discuss both libraries' major issues. This year's program is the first one held under the new framework.

As it is the first year, we set the following themes for the sessions aiming at enhancing the understanding of each other's parliamentary services.

December 3, Wednesday

Session I "What services for parliaments should be: focusing on research services"

"Function change and the direction of development of legislative information service" by Dr. Hwan Kyu Chung, NAL
"What services for parliaments should be: research services" by Mr. Kaoru Omagari, Assistant Director, Legislative Reference and Information Resources Division, Research and Legislative Reference Bureau, NDL

December 4, Thursday

Session II "What services for parliaments should be: focusing on digital information provision"

"Direction of development of legislative information service for the realization of a digital parliament" by Dr. Yoo-Hyang Kim, NAL
"What services for parliaments should be: centering on the information provision" by Mr. Takeshi Kirihara, Assistant Director, Electronic Information Services Division, Research and Legislative Reference Bureau, NDL

In Session I, Dr. Chung reported the history, current situation and issues of the NAL's legislative information services, and Mr. Omagari talked about the present state and challenges of the NDL's legislative research services. After their presentations, the participants had a lively discussion on the actual contents of each other's parliamentary services and their methods.

In Session II, Dr. Kim's report was about NAL's digital information services and the prospect of realizing a digital parliament. She also demonstrated NAL's Legislative Knowledge Database. Mr. Kirihara made a report focusing on the Full-text Database System for the Minutes of the Diet and the Total System for Research and Information Services.

After the sessions, the NDL staff in charge of this program had a meeting with the NAL delegates to discuss and exchange opinions about the future programs such as the timing of a future program and its contents. No objection was made to continuing this mutual visit program in the same style next year in Korea.

On December 5, researchers of the Bureau who specialize in the same fields as Dr. Kim, a specialist of IT, science and technology, and Dr. Chung, an expert in education, exchanged opinions with them about the subjects of research, research methods and problems.

The delegates visited the International Library of Children's Literature on Tuesday, December 2 and Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly on Friday, December 5 during their stay.

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