The concept of 'twinning' with like organisations from other countries has become part of the world landscape. In a similar fashion the Australian Government Attorney-General's Department - Lionel Murphy Library has 'twinned' with Pacific Law Libraries in Nauru, Tonga and Samoa since the early 90's.The Australian Law Librarians' Association Pacific Law Library Twinning Program was born at the 1991 Asia Pacific Law Librarians' Conference and the Lionel Murphy Library now takes the lead role in co-ordinating the Program. The twinning program has wide implications for libraries in Australia and in the Pacific. There exist co-operative arrangements with AusAid, PacLII, legal publishers, libraries and librarians in Australia and the Pacific.
With the establishment of the AusAid Pacific Governance Support Programme (PGSP) an opportunity arose to expand the work of the twinning program to include other ways to help strengthen the law and justice sectors in the Pacific. Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms are in place through the PGSP to ensure the work undertaken is of value.
Information Services Branch staff travel to the Pacific to conduct legal research workshops, information management training and to investigate ways to improve IT infrastructure, web and database systems for legal information and document management. There continue to be lessons learnt and over the next few years our evolving assistance should help to provide a solid foundation for the law and justice sector in the Pacific.
Information Services has been successful on its past three grant submissions. The release of the white paper 'Australian Aid: Promoting Growth and Stability' provided a confirmation to the Information Services Branch of the importance of this work and the long established relationships fostered by this scheme