During my Assembly placement, I had the pleasure of working with House Publications and Language Services (HPLS). HPLS is part of the Legislative Service Division and is responsible for the preparation, printing, and distribution of the daily working papers of the House, including Orders and Notices, Votes and Proceedings, and Hansard.
I closely worked with the Index and Reference branch and helped their team develop a user experience survey to analyze how Hansard indexes are currently being used by Ontario Legislative Assembly staff. The goal of the survey was to enhance the user experience of Hansard indexes. I also helped develop a presentation proposal for a government information conference on the Scrapbook Hansard project.
Along the way, I learned interesting historical facts about the digitization of the Scrapbook Hansard collection. The creation of Hansard transcripts began in 1994; prior to this date legislative librarians would collect newspaper articles pertaining to the proceedings of the legislature and gather them into a scrapbook, which eventually got named “Scrapbook Hansard”. Today, thanks to the amazing teamwork between Index and Reference officers and other legislative branches, Hansards are available electronically. The digitization of Hansard not only benefits Legislative Assembly staff but also students, researchers, legal professionals and average citizens that want to have access to Hansard.
I am grateful to have joined the HPLS team for my Assembly placement. I learned a lot about the importance of Hansard and the positive impacts of its digitization. I would like to thank the Index and Reference team, Rosalind, Kate and Emily for their warm welcome!