A Study of Legislative Information Seeking Behavior of Congressional Assistants
Date Issued
2008
Date
2008
Author(s)
Tian, Chien-Hui
Abstract
Congressional assistants play an important bureaucratic role in helping legislators deal with legislative duties and political affairs. The objectives of this study are: first, trying to fathom Congressional assistants’ needs, behaviors, researching methods and motivations of information seeking; second, trying to evaluate the information surroundings of the Parliamentary Library, which provides basic legislative information for Congressional assistants. The aim is to proffer references and suggestions for the service planning of the Parliamentary Library.he study belongs to qualitative research and adopts the in-depth interview approach, using the Parliamentary Library as the model case. I have invited ten Congressional assistants whose main tasks including bill research for interview. This study aims to analyze the characteristics of these Congressional assistants’ behaviors and the external situations when they execute information seeking. Analysis includes the interactivities and impacts between the targeted persons and the technological surroundings. I interpret the components of the interviewing records and consequently invent a format of the Congressional assistants’ legislative information seeking behaviors.he results of this study suggest that Congressional assistants mainly search the legislative information for two tasks: one, handling the issues and problems about the bill research; two, providing services for civilians. The Congressional assistants decide what channel is best according to specific needs. Also, their legislative information seeking can be swayed by social or personal factors. The Web site of the Parliamentary Library is seen as the first step on legislative information seeking, while searching methods differ from person to person. Primarily Congressional assistants seek and judge the compatibility of the specific information on their own, choosing recorded or printed documents according to their needs. Factors that influence the information seeking process include as follows: classified information are less than enough so as to cause the difficulties of information gathering; the content of the Web site does not correspond to social issues. When it comes to whether such information is useful, Congressional assistants regard the spontaneity and availability as most important factors. The results also show that the Web site and the repertoire of the Parliamentary Library basically satisfy the needs of Congressional assistants.his thesis uses the results to offer suggestions for the resources and services of the Parliamentary Library. The Parliamentary Library should do more to cater to the information needs of the committee since the scale of the Parliament has been halved. As far as the information gathering is concerned, the Parliamentary Library had better strengthen the gathering of the local and the national information so as to satisfy specific needs of legislators. In the aspect of information value-added services, related laws of Parliament, the introduction and translation of foreign regulations, and the special information services that are catered to individual legislators and Congressional assistants need improvement. When it comes to information service planning, the Parliament Library is supposed to hold the poll to better understand the needs of regular searchers. As far as the development of the library resources, the gathering and circulation of gray literature can be highly achieved through the collaboration of the administrative department and the research team. As to the interlibrary resources, the interlibrary system should be established to help resources exchange via the links.
Subjects
Congressional Assistants
Information Seeking Behavior
Legislative Information
Type
thesis
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