Parliamentary Library and Information Services as Instruments for Democratic Development.

This paper formulates the means for an improved role for all citizens through a dynamic and interactive parliamentary library and information system. It illustrates the success of such a proposal to strengthen the legitimacy of parliaments by referring to the experience of the Congress of the Republic of Peru and explains what is being done to help Peruvian citizens who do not yet have personal access to electronic networks. Following an introduction, the first section discusses networks and the media, including the Internet as a social institution, differences between audiovisual information and the electronic medium, the role of parliaments and their information services, the importance of communication in policy making, and control of political information by the television, newspaper, and radio media. The Peruvian experience is described in the second section, including the Peruvian Virtual Parliament, a weekly radio program, and access through the World Wide Web to the Digital Archive Systems for Peruvian Legislation. The third section covers the Library of the Peruvian Congress, including objectives, services, collections, electronic catalog, and staff. Library services to encourage citizen participation are summarized in the last section. (MES)