Canberra Times articles

I am writing to correct an article in the Canberra Times of 7 February and an editorial published on 8 February.



Both articles make the claim is made that the Parliamentary Library “could also be forced to move some of its research archives to the National Library of Australia” in order to accommodate additional staff required for a Parliamentary Budget Office.



No one said anything like this in evidence to the Joint Select Committee on the Parliamentary Budget Office. I do not envisage trying to find a new home for any of our “research archives” or collection materials. What I said about the collections, accommodation and the National Library (from the draft transcript) was:



CHAIR—What of the collection would need to be moved, if any?

Ms Missingham—Probably not a lot of the collection. We did have an expert in to look at our collection layout and there is some work we need to do to have the serials in better runs and have them in better access by rejigging the library. If the DPS staff were to leave, we would have probably an easier to navigate collection. It is certainly true to say as well that the use of our print collection is decreasing while the use of our electronic collection is increasing. However, our print collection grows every year by the size of parliamentary paper runs. Generally we only keep the key journals that are most relevant to us. If they are more marginal journals we do not keep them forever, and we have a relationship with the National Library, which, of course, has a very vast collection and they have a Parliamentary Services desk and we are very well served by that library. But we do not think there would be an enormous amount of shrinkage needed in the physical collection.



In summary there are no plans to send our “research archives”, whatever that might be, to the National Library.


Roxanne Missingham

OFFICE OF THE AUSTRALIAN INFORMATION COMMISSIONER

OAIC launches blog on its Issues Paper 1 - Towards an Australian Government Information Policy


The OAIC released an issues paper entitled Towards an Australian Government Information Policy at its launch on 1 November 2010 (available at http://www.oaic.gov.au/publications/papers.html). The Issues Paper proposes ten draft principles on open public sector information. The OAIC is now seeking comments on the principles via a blog available at http://oaic.govspace.gov.au/. Alternatively, formal submissions can be made to consultation@oaic.gov.au .

Comments are due by 1 March 2011.