As part of the initiatives of the Changing Libraries Programme, announced by the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government in 2005, it was proposed to make a selection of online business and general reference sources and encyclopaediae available to the general public through public libraries.
These reference sources have been available in the past in libraries in book format. Some libraries have moved to make them available online, but in order to drive the provision of online reference material throughout all of the public libraries, the Minister allocated funding for this as part of the Changing Libraries Programme.
A Working Group of County and City Librarians, chaired by An Chomhairle, identified the areas of information needs currently displayed by the general public and researched and evaluated the resources available. Lexis Nexus and Vision-net were selected as the most comprehensive and pertinent to the needs of the public and both will be key elements of the new Public Library Information Services.
Lexis Nexis is an aggregate content source provider of news, information and company information from all over the world with its Nexis product. It provides access to national and local Irish titles, including newspapers, journals and periodicals and also to a wide range of international titles also. The Public Library Information Services access to Nexis provides customised searching of specific areas of interest such as business, health matters and the environment as well as searches on any general topic of choice. Nexis also provides access to worldwide company information and to UK law journals.
The Nexis service will be available in 2009 free of charge on all public access PCs in over 350 library branches across the country.
Vision-net.ie provides online fully searchable access to company information and business names for all businesses within Ireland. The service includes the up-to-date information from original company documents as filed by businesses with the Companies Registration Office for the past three years. Searches can also be carried out by industry or by company director. In addition, Vision-net provides access to information on all limited companies in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom.
The Vision-net service will be available in 2009 free of charge on all public access PCs in over 350 library branches across the country.
There are an increasing number of freely available reference websites online providing reliable and useful information. An Chomhairle is working with Reference Librarians in the library authorities to identify the most useful of these and it is intended to incorporate access to these as part of the Public Library Reference Services.