E-clips at Parliament Press Release - 4 December 2002

E-clips service keeps MPs in the know.

E-clips is playing a key role in the news information provided to MPs and other parliamentary staff.
The Parliamentary library has developed a new electronic news updating service, named In Focus, which is due to go live in February 2003. It will streamline the flow of news information to the 1000-plus staff, including MPs, who currently access the Parliamentary Intranet.

"MPs are among the most information-overloaded people in the country," explains Amelia de Lorenzo, development manager for the Parliamentary Library.
"In Focus is designed to update them with crucial media information in the most timely, accurate and efficient way."

E-clips will provide an automatic and continual feed of news from its range of daily newspapers and magazines, which along with other news sources, will be integrated to the In Focus service and become available on Parliament's Intranet.

It will consist of weekly bulletins in 15 different subject areas - such as education, health, environment, transport or law - which will be further broken down into several sub-bulletins. The bulletins will be posted on Monday night, in readiness for the MPs sitting on Tuesday morning.

Amelia de Lorenzo says Parliament has some unique requirements in a news monitoring service - not least of all the sheer breadth of information required. "Parliament basically covers everything," she says. "We also have areas which are hot topics at any one time, such as leaky buildings at the moment."

One of the advantages of using E-clips is that the information can be sourced at different levels. Staff can choose to simply scan the title and abstract, or they can click on the link to view the full text article from Newztext.

"It's important that they can access a hard copy too," explains Amelia. "This allows busy MPs to print off an article and do their reading in a taxi or aeroplane."

Another advantage provided by E-clips is the timeliness of information, allowing Parliamentarians to respond quickly to breaking stories.

"Currency-wise, it's very timely. We're receiving the information twice a day and at the same time the hard copy is published. Under the old manual system, when we scanned the newspapers and photocopied articles, we would have a time lag of 1-2 days." The Parliamentary Library is already familiar with The Knowledge Basket products, having utilised Newztext for many years.

"Newztext has been one of our best resources, and it is well-used in Parliament," says Amelia de Lorenzo.

"E-clips is a further development which allows us to channel the news directly into our In Focus service. We know we're getting the best information provided to us, which we then on-source to our client groups."

As former librarians for the DSIR, The Knowledge Basket directors Dave Keet and Linda Winterburn have a strong background in information management - and Amelia de Lorenzo says this expertise is invaluable.

"As well as having their technological expertise, they have a thorough understanding of our profession and what we want to achieve for our clients," she says.

"We believe In Focus will be quite a ground-breaking product, and E-Clips is a key component. The technical side of it is brilliant."

Libby Schultz