New Zealand Law Librarians Symposium May 7 & 8 2009

Theresa Rogers attended two sessions at the New Zealand Law Librarians symposium held at Auckland City Libraries.

Employment law
Greg Cain, Partner at Minter Ellison spoke on the changes in employment law since the introduction of the new government. The changes so far are:

• 90 day trial periods
• Kiwi saver
• Restart – redundancy package
• 9 day fortnight

Changes to come are:

• Holidays – the ability of employees to trade in their 4th week of annual leave
• Collective bargaining – Unions will need to get permission from employers to get access to employees at the workplace
• Dispute resolution – mediation will continue to be the primary problem solving mechanism however there will be changes to the Meditation Services so they will be properly resourced with qualified mediators.
• Also, there will be changes to the Employment Relations Authority to ensure that the Authority acts in a more judicial manner (the aim is that this will allow relatively simple access to justice while ensuring robust & judicial results).

The most interesting aspect the information about the 90 day trial periods is aimed at:

• benefitting small to medium employers
• became effective 1 Mar 2009 (by written agreement between the employee & employer)
• During the trial period an employee may be dismissed and the employee is not entitled to bring a PG (Personal Grievance) or any other legal proceedings in respect of the dismissal
• It is not available to employers with more than 20 employees or it the employer has previously employed the employee

However there are issues already surfacing like when does employment ‘begin’ (when they sign the contract or when they physically start work); Do casuals count?; What about fixed term contracts?; What about giving notice?; Also there is no impediment to bringing a PG or legal proceedings other than in respect of the dismissal (eg they could claim racial discrimination).


AUT law school
Professor Noel Cox, Auckland University of Technology spoke on the process of allowing AUT to offer a law degree. Evidently, universities cannot just decide themselves that they are now going to offer law degrees, there is a set process that they must go through. This process is in three stages:

1. The Council of Legal Education must give its approval
2. The New Zealand Universities Vice Chancellors Committee must also give their approval
3. The Tertiary Education Commission must also give their approval

Part of the process is looking at the resources that the institution offers to support this degree (eg staffing expertise and physical resources – with particular attention to library resources).

AUT gained these approvals and in March of this year commenced their first intake of 80-90 law students; the law degree will be fully established in 4 years time. A significant number of these students are mature students (in fact one is 78 years old!!!!). AUT decided that they did not want to be exclusive with this degree so it is available to anyone who wishes to apply, however they must maintain a ‘B’ average or above in the law papers to continue studying.

AUT will be focusing this degree on ‘Commercial Law” – which will have a much more generalist application. Evidently most law graduates leave the profession within 5 years & less that have ever practise law at all. Intellectual Property; Company Law and Legal Ethics will be compulsory papers for all graduates.

AUT are currently recruiting law staff, they have appointed Ian Eagles as Dean of Law & the degree will be located within the faculty of Business – it has become now ‘Business & Law”

Positively Parliament seminar

On the 6th of May 2009 members of Wellington’s Parliamentary Library held a seminar on using and managing parliamentary publications entitled ‘Postively Parliament’. The Parliamentary Library provides a research and information services to Parliament and the public. This seminar was attended by Louise Linnell, Jo Owen, Elspeth Orwin, Janelle Penney & Paul Veart.

Description of parliamentary information service - Katherine Close
Katherine gave a description of the Parliamentary Information Service, which responds to public requests for information about various aspects of parliament. They also act as a referral service for whom to contact within parliament.

Research papers produced by the Parliamentary Library on a variety of subjects are published on the New Zealand Parliament website and provide a wealth of easily accessible data. For example, recent titles include New Zealand Health system reforms; Young people and gangs in New Zealand; Immigration chronology: selected events 1840-2008.

Parliamentary process & documentation – Barbara Stedman & Mike Keane
Barbara, research librarian, law and government team and Mike, eServices Co-ordinator - Training, Parliamentary Library, took us through the parliamentary process and then presented a case study (she used the Policing Bill 2007) to follow the bill through all its stages - from its introduction when the bill is laid on the table (no debates), to the final assent.

In particular, they provided details about the process of bills through each reading and the difference between the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives and the Journals of the House of Representatives. It was also good to find out exactly what online coverage the Parliament website has for such things as the Supplementary order papers (SOPs), and the usefulness of the Bills Digests.

Parliament’s website & related websites – Mike Keane
Mike Keane, eServices co-ordinator, Parliamentary Library, raced through parliament's revamped website and gave a very good overview of this most interesting and informative site. The recent revamps have made the site even better and of course this is a continual process. The site appears easy to navigate and contains an immense amount of information - check out the home page! He covered other related sites and useful links:

• The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (which has things like a complete ministerial list)
• Dept of Internal Affairs (which has a wealth of varied information)
• Beehive (the official website of the government of New Zealand, which includes releases by ministers)
• and Elections
  

Hidden gems – historical perspective – Katherine Close
Katherine described the wealth of material the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (often referred to AJHRs) contain, particularly those from the 19th and early 20th centuries. (From the 1940s onwards the level of detail strongly declines). The reports of one-off bodies like Royal Commissions, and the annual reports of government departments, published in the Appendices, contain highly detailed information on a wide range of political, social and economic topics of historical interest. They also include many mentions of individuals which make them of great interest for family history research.

She also spoke of the wide variety of illustrations they contain, including lithographs, maps, charts and photos, and recommended the following reference: “Maps in the Appendices to the Journals, House of Representatives : a chronological listing” / R.P. Hargreaves. Dunedin [N.Z.] : Geography Dept., University of Otago, 1968.

Collection Management – Katherine Close & Cath Anyan
Katherine and Cath covered the state of parliamentary publications in public libraries and universities throughout New Zealand. Publications such as Bills and the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (A-Js) are kept in a limited number of libraries and in many cases they are in a deteriorating condition (including Auckland City Libraries’ copies of the A-Js). In the case of Bills, many libraries have also thrown their older copies out. Due to this, there is an increasing demand for digitisation of parliamentary publications,

Another area of collection management touched on was statutes. Up until 2003 the Parliamentary Counsel Office (PCO) published statutes in bound volumes. However after 2003 there was a change in their policy, with statutes only being published individually. Auckland City Libraries now sources its bound statutes from Brookers, who still publish bound volumes. The reason for this change by the PCO was due to the increasing volume of material available on the parliamentary website.

The final area covered was the trialling of the 'e-committee' process. This has been designed to allow online submissions to select committees and subsequent publication of these submissions on the parliamentary website. Currently the e-committee process has only been used the Commerce Committee's Inquiry into Affordable Housing (and one other), but there are plans to widen its use.


Q&A, feedback, future developments – Moira Fraser & Cath Anyan
The seminar finished with a discussion by Moira Fraser regarding future developments, and the possible digitization of more parliamentary papers. There is currently no budget for retrospective digitization, but Moira requested feedback to help inform where best to start and to give information for presenting a business case for funding.

There was a difference of opinion between librarians from public libraries and those working at law firms. While public librarians were keen to see the A-Js digitised, starting from either the nineteenth century or the mid twentieth century, law librarians wanted to see the Parliamentary Debates/Hansards digitised first. Unluckily for both, a lack of funding means neither will be digitised in the near future.

Donald McLean – Te Makarini : folders & lives

Kate de Courcy attended a symposium held as part of the History Programme, Victoria University of Wellington/Te Whare Wananga o te Upoko o Te Ika a Maui, Friday 17 April 2009.

Donald McLean, (1820-1877) “administrator, runholder, politician, & provincial superintendent”, was a major figure in 19th century New Zealand history, extensively involved in different roles with Maori and land sales in the North Island.
For further information on his life see the Dictionary of New Zealand biography www.dnzb.govt.nz and the biography by Ray Fargher which appeared last year

The bulk of McLean’s personal papers are held at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington. They are the single largest group of papers of a 19th century individual held there, and a major source for researchers.

The digitisation project
In 2008 a significant proportion (but not all) of the McLean papers were made available through a new website http://mp.natlib.govt.nz. The microfilms of the originals were digitized, transcripts where available were added and detailed indexing provided. In addition 1000 of the 3000 letters in Maori in the collection have been transcribed and translated as a new project. David Colquhoun and Elliott Young of the Alexander Turnbull Library presented a paper on the project at the LIANZA conference 2008.

The symposium, organized by Dr Charlotte Macdonald of the School of History at Vic brought together Turnbull library staff, the translators, McLean biographers Alan Ward and Ray Fargher, historians, Waitangi Tribunal researchers, and post-modernist historians, who mine the McLean papers for other aspects of 19th history eg attitudes to half-castes, mechanics of cultural transfer in the Scottish immigrant community.

The speakers spoke for 15 minutes each followed by questions and discussion.

Discussion was wide-ranging -- from the theoretical to the detailed -- McLean’s character, future areas of research in the archive, detailed chronology of the Waitara block episode, McLean’s role in land sales, the complexity and process of translating and transcribing the Maori letters, structure and searching of the McLean papers website, the risks of creating such a website, changes in the Maori language.

Researchers were all delighted to have the papers available and look forward to more. One person commented that now the papers are available on your own PC at home, you lose the sense of being part of a research community, all whirring through microfilms in a reading room together and meeting informally. There was a call for social space online connected to the papers. This would also be a vehicle for comments, feedback, corrections etc.

Sir George Grey. There are parallels which can be drawn between the McLean papers and Sir George Grey’s papers held in Special Collections at Central Library, in terms of the size and period of the 2 collections, research use, and translation and digitization potential. It was valuable to meet a group of principally Wellington-based researchers and to participate in the discussions.