Special features of the parliamentary libraries’ activity
Special features of the parliamentary libraries’ activity

Summary/Abstract: The parliamentary libraries are documentation centres, destined to support the legislative and development of specific activities, therefore, they are bodies depending rather much on the social environment, with which they are in a permanent interaction and interconnection. The spreading of the democratic rule in the majority of the countries in the world increased the complexity of the legislative process, and many aspects of the social life become law subjects; therefore the parliamentary libraries’ activity reaches new horizons. The requests issued by the members of Parliament cover very different fields, according to their profession, interests expressed by their voters, requests and debates in mass-media, important problems of the national or international politics. The bicameral Parliament in Romania allowed the existence of two parliamentary libraries: the Chamber of Deputies Library and the Romanian Senate Library. The two libraries develop rather similar activities, providing correct, complete and high quality services, through the access to the specific information and documentation sources. The services are equally provided, based to the same principles for all the members of the Parliament, no matter their political affiliation. The Romanian parliamentary libraries are organized according to the European standards for these structures, and their collections include works from: law and political sciences, history, social sciences, Romanian and foreign special periodicals, legislative and government documents, as well as documents of the European Union. The complexity of the reference services consists in the fact that the Library should provide information about the national parliamentary and government documents and about the documents issued by the European institutions, as well. This aspect implies consistent knowledge of databases access, information technologies use, in general, foreign languages knowledge, as well as an active cooperation with the European structures with similar responsibilities.

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