Introduction: The Purpose, Present Situation and Future of the Parliamentary Library

This issue of Library Trends explores parliamentary libraries in different parts of the world in the past and present and also offers some thoughts about their future. We are grateful for having been given this opportunity to publish the papers presented at the World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly, Milan, August 2009. The papers were presented in a joint open session organized by the Library and Research Services for Parliaments Section and the Library History Section. This issue of Library Trends also includes two papers on parliamentary libraries in Uganda and Pakistan that were not presented at the Congress. The overall theme of the Congress was “Libraries Create Futures: Building on Cultural Heritage.” Within this context, the two organizing sections called for papers on the theme of “Changing Visions: Parliamentary Libraries Past, Present and Future.”1