PARLINFO: electronic access to Canada's parliamentary heritage.

• Author: Chung, Talia

Claude Brind' Amour is Chief, Dissemination Section at the Library of Parliament. With Mike Graham, he co-ordinated the first part of the Parlinfo project (1966-today) and will be co-ordinating the second part (1867-1965) in forthcoming years. Talia Chung is a reference librarian with the Library of Parliament.

Bringing a piece of Canada's history into the electronic age, that is how some may refer to the Library of Parliament's PARLINFO project. The pairing of historical content and electronic medium: Canadian history meets Internet technology. Result: a new way of making parliamentary information available and a flexible new tool for locating information about parliamentarians. And like many of today's electronic resources, it had its genesis in a book published decades before.

In 1964, a special project was initiated by the staff of the Publications Section of the Public Archives (now National Archives) of Canada. To commemorate Canada's centennial, a unique work was produced which gathered together over 3165 biographies of parliamentarians who had held office in Canada from Confederation up to July 1st, 1967. Under the direction of J. Keith Johnson, The Canadian Directory of Parliament: 1867-1967 was published. The biographical sketches detailed the parliamentary careers of the men and women who had held office in the Senate or House of Commons. It included dates of parliamentary service, offices held, and constituencies represented. This source soon became an indispensable reference work for anyone interested in Canada's parliamentarians.

It took over four years to complete The Canadian Directory of Parliament. The Public Archives staff combed through diverse sources to ensure that the entries were as complete and as accurate as possible. Sources from which this information was derived included historical editions of The Parliamentary Guide, family histories, biographies, newspapers, parliamentary journals and debates, local and regional histories, official records, as well as, private papers. In spite of an intention to revise and update the data with supplements and new editions, this did not happen.

At the Library of Parliament, The Canadian Directory of Parliament had quickly become an invaluable source of information. Since formal updates were not forthcoming, William Stiles, assisted by Lucienne Eshelman, initiated in 1981, an informal system of collecting and updating biographical information on parliamentarians. The Library used its wealth of information resources to ensure that these biographical sketches remained accurate and up-to-date. These resources included newspaper clippings, official publications as well as...