[LINK] All Commonwealth Hansard online

[Tom Worthington]

Antony Barry wrote:
> ... complete Hansard of the Australian Parliament is now available online ...

The content is good, but the navigation to get to it could be better. 
The best place to start is from the search page. You can search Hansard 
with a simple text string, such as "Tom Worthington", which produced 66 
Matches: 
<http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/summary/summary.w3p;page=0;query=%22tom%20worthington%22;resCount=Default>.

The results of the search are categorised. In this case nine of the 
results are catalogue entries in the Parliamentary Library. Twenty are 
from Parliamentary committees. Only seven are actual mentions by 
parliamentarians in a chamber (in this case the the Senate):

         * [20] Committees
         * [9] Library
         * [29] Media
         * [1] Publications
         * [7] Senate

There is also a list by decade:

         * [8] 2010s
         * [47] 2000s
         * [11] 1990s

Here is a typical snippet displayed in the search results from 1999:

-------------------
ADJOURNMENT - Information Technology: Access - Senate Hansard - 9 August 
1999

     so ago. This year's theme `The Bush Telegraph for the 21st Century' 
targeted questions of information technology for non-metropolitan 
regions. The range of speakers included Tom Worthington , who is the 
immediate past president of the Computer Society; Fay Lamont, a finalist 
in the Telstra Businesswoman of the Year Awards in

Date: 09/08/1999 - Collection: Senate - ID: 
chamber/hansards/1999-08-09/0136 - Source: Senate
-------------------


Clicking on the link for this brings up that the portion of the Hansard, 
as a web page. There is an option to download it as PDF, or as XML:

-------------------
<hansard xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="../../hansard.xsd" version="2.0">
−
<session.header>
<date>1999-08-09</date>
<parliament.no>39</parliament.no>
<session.no>1</session.no>
<period.no>4</period.no>
<chamber>SENATE</chamber>
<page.no>6995</page.no>
<proof>0</proof>
</session.header>
−
<chamber.xscript>
−
<business.start>
<day.start>1999-08-09</day.start>
<para>	 The Senate met at 2.00 p.m.</para>
</business.start>
−
<debate>
−
<debateinfo>
<title>SENATORS: SWEARING-IN</title>
<type>Miscellaneous</type>
<page.no>6995</page.no>
</debateinfo>
...
<speech>
−
<talk.start>
−
<talker>
<time.stamp>21:50:00</time.stamp>
<page.no>7068</page.no>
<name role="metadata">Payne, Sen Marise</name>
<name role="display">Senator PAYNE</name>
<name.id>M56</name.id>
<electorate>NSW</electorate>
<party>LP</party>
<in.gov>1</in.gov>
<first.speech>0</first.speech>
</talker>
−
...
<para>
I have previously addressed issues relating to the IT revolution and 
information technology in general, and most recently discussed the 
particular challenges for those in rural and regional Australia in terms 
of their particular route on the information superhighway. I have also 
spoken, not in conjunction with this but in other areas, of the work of 
the NSW Liberal Women's Council and Liberal Women's Forum and the 
important efforts that they have put in in many policy areas. In 
continuing to recognise their efforts, I want to put on record the 
success of their most recent endeavour, an annual rural rendezvous held 
in Mittagong in the New South Wales Southern Highlands which I attended 
a week or so ago. This year's theme `The Bush Telegraph for the 21st 
Century' targeted questions of information technology for 
non-metropolitan regions. The range of speakers included Tom 
Worthington, who is the immediate past president of the Computer Society...
</para>
-------------------


While it is good that Hansard is available online, the interface could 
be improved:

1. Have a link on the word "Search" in text on the Parliament home page 
(currently it is in an image with the phrase "ParlInfo Search"),

2. Include the word "Hansard" on the search page,

3. Add an option on the search page to limit results to the Hansard,

4. De-clutter the search results page, by moving from the top to the 
bottom: "Note: Where available, the PDF/Word icon below is provided to 
view the complete and fully formatted document", "View Or Save XML" and 
"Download Fragment". Those who need these options are likely to scroll 
to the bottom and find the, for everyone else it will not matter,

5. Check the search page displays correctly on a range of browsers, 
including those for non-Microsoft operating systems, smart phones and 
tablet computers (on my Firefox 3.6.17 browser, the search box is off 
the right side of the page).


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra