It's almost a year since the election. This government came in making a number of pledges, which we have kept.

We came in with a set of values and attitudes that as ministers we have all tried to put into practice.

We wanted to restore a sense of balance. For the library community I have translated that to mean that access to knowledge is as important as balancing the financial books.

We also wanted to govern in the interests of all New Zealanders.

Some in the library and general community were worried by the direction that the National Library was taking. Their voices needed to be heard and their concerns addressed. That was why we stopped the sale of books, set up a special collection and made it accessible. That is why we reviewed the restructuring of the Library.

There was also a sense in the community that they wanted a correction in direction, not a wholesale change. So the review was conducted quietly without the fanfare of media trumpets and with respect for the human lives of those working in the institution.

That work has been completed.

· New technologies are assisting the National Library to achieve its goals for the collections of New Zealand's documentary heritage, encompassed in the Alexander Turnbull Library.

· They point the way for some exciting developments in fulfilling the original vision of Alexander Turnbull, when he made his bequest to the nation in 1918.

· The future focus for the Alexander Turnbull Library is not only in terms of improving electronic access. The collections of the Turnbull - in all formats - are there for the use of current researchers, as well as being preserved for the benefit of future generations.

· A highlight of the year therefore was achieving a substantial increase in the acquisitions budget for the Turnbull, enabling it to strengthen its collecting activities in several areas, and assuring future generations of their own opportunities to access these heritage collections.

· I undertook to examine the National Library Act, to see if there were any aspects that warranted amendment to ensure continuing appropriateness. This exercise is now underway, and is giving particular attention to the role and position of the Alexander Turnbull Library within the National Library, the provisions for the legal deposit of publications and the recognition of the National Library's responsiveness to the Treaty of Waitangi.

· Advice will be provided by the National Library, following consultation with the library community and with other interested parties. I will also be receiving advice from the Trustees of the National Library.

· I have just received FOTL's comprehensive submission on the revision of the National Library Act. I haven't had a chance to study it but thank you for your hard work in meeting the timetable for submisisons.

· As the relationship between the National Library and the Alexander Turnbull Library is one of the key focuses of the review I thought it might be useful to consider 'what is a national library?'

· Although there is no single definition of what constitutes a national library, the functions of the National Library of New Zealand are typical of other national libraries around the world.

· They are for example consistent with the definition applied in IFLA's 1996 Guidelines for Legislation for National Library Services, where a "National Library" is understood to refer to a library which, regardless of its designation or legal status, is recognised as an outstanding national institution on account of:
(i) its role in collecting, organising, preserving and making available the nation's heritage, and the pre-eminence of its collections, services and expertise;

(ii) the provision of infrastructure and leadership for the effective functioning of the nation's.

· The National Library of New Zealand is relatively unusual in having departmental status. In Australia and Canada, for example, the national libraries are the equivalent of Crown-owned entities here (e.g. the Museum of New Zealand), and are subordinate to Ministries of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (Australia) and of Heritage (Canada). In the United States, the de facto National Library is the Library of Congress - the equivalent of our Parliamentary Library.

· Unsurprisingly, the extent to which national libraries around the world are involved in the formulation of government policy is also highly variable, and is generally determined by the position of the library within government.

· The Alexander Turnbull Library, while fulfilling in some respects some of the functions of a national library, is specifically differentiated from other libraries as being a research library.

· An unequivocal definition of a research library is as elusive as that of a national library.

· Any library with a collection that supports research may present itself to the public as a research library - provided that it has the critical mass of material that is required to support intensive research in the discipline or subject area being researched. This may range from several volumes to thousands. In some respects, it is the pattern of usage of a collection that confers the status of "research library" - if that is the purpose it is being put to, then ipso facto it is a research library.

· One common thread among different libraries that define themselves as research libraries is a focus on specialisation - an undertaking to collect as much as is possible on a specific subject. The specialisations of the Turnbull are well known to their friends.

· National libraries often include research collections themselves, arising from the fact that they typically have a comprehensive (and often the most comprehensive) collection of their nation's recorded heritage.

· They are also often home to specialised collections that reflect their historical origins, and that have a discrete identity as research libraries within the larger institution. Such is the case in New Zealand.

· The revision of the National Library Act is not expected to alter the fundamental purpose of either the National Library or the Alexander Turnbull Library. The present exercise is predicated on an assumption that the core business of the National Library remains valid: in the terms of the National Library Act, this is to "collect, preserve, and make available recorded knowledge, particularly that relating to New Zealand, to supplement and further the work of other libraries in New Zealand, and to enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its cultural interchanges with other nations".

· The Alexander Turnbull Library is critical to achieving that purpose.

· A further assumption of the revision exercise is therefore that structural changes to the National Library as a department will not be considered. The National Library is the sum of its component parts, such that the viability of the parts or the whole would be compromised if the institutional structure of the National Library were changed.

· In the case of the Alexander Turnbull Library this interdependence goes beyond the fact that it shares purpose-built accommodation, information systems, and operational services with other parts of the National Library - more critically, users routinely shift between the various services and collections, and expect to find complementarity between them.

· Another significant interdependence revolves around legal deposit, where the Alexander Turnbull Library undertakes responsibility for the permanent preservation of one of the legal deposit copies of New Zealand publications received by the National Library.

· Earlier this year, the Prime Minister spoke of the responsibilities of our national institutions, especially those that are based in Wellington. With national funding goes an obligation for national services, leadership, and excellence in the field.

· This challenge to our cultural institutions is not a new one. It is useful to consider how, in the course of its distinguished history, the Alexander Turnbull Library has grappled with how it should present itself to "the public".

· In its very early years, it developed a reputation as being a closed shop, accessible only on the favour of the first Chief Librarian, Johannes Andersen. Clyde Taylor, his successor, had to undertake a vigorous campaign to open the Turnbull to a wider public, presenting it for perhaps the first time as "a research library for New Zealanders". Taylor's innovative marketing techniques extended to window displays in Kirckaldies.

· More recently, and as the sophistication and level of interest in our own cultural history has increased, the Turnbull was compelled to reassess how it presented itself to the public. A greater emphasis was placed on serving the needs of researchers, and the Turnbull became positioned more as a library of last resort.

· The challenge for the Alexander Turnbull Library today, and for the National Library, is to meet the responsibilities of being national institutions while remaining true to the special characteristics that define them as singular entities.

· One of the areas where this is being met with great success is in the use of digital technologies to bring the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library to a wider world. Around the world, National Libraries are bridging the print and digital cultures - they are continuing to provide scholars with the resources and services to work deeply and intensively with their collections, while using digitisation to maximise public exposure of the riches that they hold.

· A project underway in the National Library right now exemplifies this strategy, with the development of an online resource supporting senior secondary teachers and students in the arts curriculum. The resource is drawing extensively on the photographic and music collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library, and will provide another window into the collections as a whole.

· Among the users of this new resource will be some of the scholars of tomorrow. The needs of these future researchers are held in our trust, and it is our responsibility to ensure that this wonderful institution is there for them tomorrow, as it is for us today.

· Broadcasting
Your president invited me to comment on one of my other portfolios, broadcasting and its place in reflecting/conserving New Zealand's cultural identity, just as the National and Turnbull libraries do.

· Radio and television can, of course, be vital media for our own narratives and images. They have an extraordinarily pervasive presence in our lives, conditioning for better or worse the way we see our country, and the opinions and values we hold. They have an unparalleled capacity to provide a shared experience, and to make minority voices heard.

· And because of this - and as was noted in the Labour Party document Broadcasting - It's About Us, - broadcasting is an important factor in community building - and in building and defining our nation. 'In a global society it is important to recognise what makes us different from other peoples. Therefore we need to see and hear New Zealand stories and issues, New Zealand programmes for children, New Zealand faces and accents, New Zealand sport, New Zealand landscape and New Zealand music. Local content is an integral part of our cultural identity.'

· So there are compelling reasons why a responsible Government would decide that for cultural and social - and not just commercial - reasons, it needs to involve itself as effectively as possible in broadcasting.

· Public broadcasting has always been seen as something of a political football. But I believe we as a government have a responsibility to get some "public service" functions back into the state-owned broadcaster. That is not to say that we are bringing it under political control.

· A draft Charter has been developed and published for public discussion and feedback. At the same time, I have begun working through the range of issues with TVNZ that are involved in implementing the Charter.

· You may be interested to know that there have been some 140 responses to the Charter but many of these are the deliberations of groups of individuals representing significant interested parties. They are being analysed and the results will be reported back to me before Christmas.