The Usability of Digitized Dutch Parliamentary Record in Historical Research

Johan van Merriënboer, Radboud University

Slides

1. Title and name2. Library of the Dutch Lower House with the proceedings of both Houses of the Estates-

General and the internet address of the digitized records3. Search engine4. Advanced search form5. Presentation of the results6. Found document with highlights7. Pdf / portable document file version of the found document8. Search engine for proceedings after 1 January 19959. [mention briefly] five subjects of discussion10. Key questions11. [back to the] subjects of discussion12. The First National Assembly of 1796-179713. Dutch Lower House / Second Chamber in 197314. New Lower House / Second Chamber nowadays, since 199215. Dutch Upper House in 196716. Three ways to surf / carry out research17. [end] title and name

1.

The Usability if Digitized Dutch Parliamentary Record in Historical Research

My name is Johan van Merriënboer

I am a researcher of the Centre for Parliamentary History, which a Dutch research institute still located on the campus of the Radboud University Nijmegen – we still exist

I have studied the proceedings of Dutch Parliament on paper for many years, and the digitized version of these papers since 2007 when the first part of these digitized records became available

2. Here you see the library of the Dutch Lower House with the proceedings of both Houses of the States-General and the internet address of the digitized records

The proceedings were digitized by the Royal Library of the Netherlands

The main reason to do this was the bad condition of the paper on which the proceedings in the 19th century were printed.

There were concerns in the 1990’s that part of the collection would be lost within some decades and it was decided to put it all on microfilm.

So, conservation was the main concern.

At that time the Dutch Royal library also was experimenting with digitizing a selection of national newspapers (1920-1945)

After some studying, in 2003 the digitalization project was started which was financially supported by the Second Chamber. Besides conservation, disclosure to the general public became the second motive behind the project.

The Centre for Parliamentary History – among others – was also asked to give suggestions

Between 2004 and 2008 two and a half million pages of proceedings were put on microfilm. And then these microfilms were digitized and made available on a website supported by the Royal Library, starting in 2007

By 2010 the entire project was finished: two and a half million pages online available for all

3. The search engine

On the first page of the website of these digitized proceedings

you will find a simple search form in which you can enter key words

You can also select the years in order to limit your search

4. Advanced search form

It is also possible to click further to an advanced search form

Here you can limit your search to a particular Chamber or to the Second Chambers Commissions

You can also specify the dates on which you want to look

Or limit your search to a particular speaker, and then add other speakers

It is also possible to limit your search to debates, preparatory documents or written questions

And furthermore you can click to indexes and maps, and search them

5. The presentation of the results

Two words ‘onbehagen’ and ‘vrouw’ – Dutch for dicontentment and woman - two words in the title of a famous Dutch feminist essay, gave 844 results, as you can see

The results are presented in this way

And can be refined in seven different ways

You can pick a Chamber or a document type on the right

If you click on the first result you get this

6. Found document with highlights

This is page nine of the proceedings of 22 November 1988 in the First Chamber as you can see

The keywords or search-terms are highlighted

Here you might click on the PDF – the portable document – file for the entire proceedings of 22 November 1988

7. Pdf / portable document file version of the found document

This is the first page of that PDF-file; this is easy to print and you can of course easily search within this document

8. Search engine for proceedings after 1 January 1995

The search form for documents after 1 January 1995 is more complicated

That is what you see here

It is part of the website overheid.nl which in translation is something like government.com

9. [mention briefly] five subjects of discussion

Next, I would like to make some brief remarks about my own experience with this new asset.

In this short time I can only touch briefly on these subjectsso, please feel free to tackle me about the details in the next few days here in Finland

10. Key questions

For me as a scholar specializing in parliamentary history

These two key questions pop up:

Do these digitized proceedings offer me new and better ways to realize traditional research goals?

Or/and can they completely change my understanding of what parliamentary history might be?

11. [back to the] subjects of discussion

[Personal user experience]

It is a great advantage of course that the proceeding are immediately available, any place and any time

They are also fully searchable

You can use a combination of key words as a kind of dragnet

So the chance that you miss important references in seemingly minor debates is small

On the other hand I think that part of my research is not very suitable for a digital approach of the research material

The first step is to take stock of the proceedings and identify the most important policy issues of a government term or electoral period

For this step I have to do much cross reading, make notes, turn back to previous pages, skip pages or look at more pages at the same time

A possible new approach is that you can produce data and connections of data over a long period of time for which you had to spend years in a library

Later on I will give you some examples

An interesting spin of is that these digitized proceedings can form an extension of the memory of politicians and policy makers today – or at least for their assistants and speech writers

They also create an opportunity to present the results of your research in a new digital way with direct references to your sources.

In digitized proceedings it is easy to trace and track concepts. This is a promising strategy for research but it has to be effective, efficient and comprehensive.

Some examples

1. Question Time was introduced in 1948 in Dutch parliament. You can easily track its history

2. The political concept of ‘polarization’. You will soon discover that until the 1960s this term was only used for a production process which involved sugar.

In 1968 the term polarization was used for the first time in the second Chamber for the strategy to accentuate political differences between left and right in order to destabilize confessional parties.

In order to prevent pitfalls, you can ask yourself questions like these:

Is the Lower House the place to look if you are researching concepts?

Was the matter really decided in parliament?

Did a political debate really take place? Did the speaker actually said what he meant? In the Second Chamber politicians for the government parties often do not say what they actually mean. Others often only give a testimony for their own parties

Misspellings or misreading are also pitfalls, especially in the earlier proceedings.

And of course as a historian you always have to be careful with digital quantifications. Interpretation within a particular context is essential. Especially because the proceedings often are actual speaking situations. It is a narrative source. Supplementation by qualitative sources - newspaper articles or cabinet minutes – is very important to make your point effectively.

I think that digitized proceedings can be used for comparative research on the history of political concepts

But there are problems that need to be addressed.

Firstly, these concepts operate within a specific political culture.

And secondly, it is quite possible that the origins of a particular concept and important modifications of it did not appear in the proceedings.

New concepts were often developed in party papers or constitutional literature, not in the parliamentary debates.

In the Netherlands the central political concepts of the day are being deliberated in the general debate each year after the King’s speech in September. Maybe this can be a starting point for comparative research

12. The First National Assembly of 1796-1797

Now a short history lesson as intermezzo – about Dutch Parliament

The Dutch Estates General go back 5 hundred and 50 years

The first assembly of the representatives of the Dutch States or Provinces met in Bruges in Flanders, now Belgium, on the ninth of January 1464

The first modern parliament in the Netherlands was called First National Assembly

It opened in March 1796 and lasted until August 1797

Its members were the first to be elected democratically, albeit indirectly and with limited suffrage based on a poll tax

It convened in the new ballroom of the Stadtholder of Holland William the Fifth

As you can see on this slide

13. Dutch Lower House / Second Chamber in 1973

This is the same ballroom in 1973

With the Dutch Prime Minister Joop den Uyl making a government policy statement in the Dutch Lower House or Second Chamber

The Dutch Parliament started recording and publishing its proceedings in 1847.

Ten years later, in 1857, it decided to reconstruct the earlier proceedings starting in 1814 on the basis of newspaper accounts, minutes and in the archives.

So the date of the first digitized record you will find This is the day of the first meeting of the States General is: Monday 2 May 1814

Worth mentioning is that in the first two meetings, 2 may 1814 and the next day the Members of Parliament first of all drew up their own Code of Order

14 New Lower House / Second Chamber nowadays, since 1992

In 1992 the Second Chamber left the historical and attractive old ballroom

Nowadays its plenary sessions take place in this large meeting hallA glass palace that could be anywhere in the world

15. Dutch Upper House in 1967

The Dutch Upper House or First Chamber was established in 1815

In that year the bicameral system was introduced And the States General was split into two houses or chambers

Since 1849 the plenary sessions of the First Chamber take place every Thursday in the former assembly room of the States of Holland that was built in 1650

As you know Holland is one of our provinces, not the entire country

The slide captures the general debate of 1967.

16. Three ways to surf / carry out research

Now the fun part

I will briefly mention a few ways to surf the proceedings and give you some examples

[A.] You can look for historical benchmarks, or events and stories

What did they talk about in the Lower House exactly fifty years ago? On the 12th of June 1964?

Recently we presented the debates in the Second Chamber on the Satanic Verses of Salman Rushdie that took place exactly twenty five years ago with some background and links to current issues on our website

[B.] You can look for historical evidence, or check old questions

Many years ago I was asked by a politician where in the proceedings he could find a famous one-liner from a former liberal minister of Justice:

‘Democracy is not a form of government for people who are scared easily.’

I could not answer him ten years ago, but now I can: in 1969 the minister was asked why the French student leader Daniel Cohn Bendit was admitted in the Netherlands and allowed to speak to a student demonstration.

‘Democracy is not a form of government for people who are scared easily’, he answered

You can also check when a certain political concept was fist coined in the Second Chamber

Socialism was mentioned for the first time in 1848 together with communism in a debate about the freedom of education

Fascism was mentioned for the first time in 1921 by a Social Democrat and immediately labelled murderous and violent by him

Hitler is mentioned for the first time – and not in a positive way - in 1924 together with Ludendorff

Another example. Finland. Occasionally the county was mentioned in the nineteenth century as a competitor for Dutch shipbuilders or for its advanced social legislation.

Remarkably often references to Finnish sources - Mechelin and Vera Hjelt - were made in the debate in Dutch parliament in 1916 about the women’s right to vote. Apparently the Finns were pioneers at this point.

C. Ask questions and generate new data sets

By taking sample surveys:

A very simple one is the key word ‘onbehagen’, or discontentment.

This was a key concept in the late sixties: years of protest and social discontent

This is confirmed by the number of hits in the proceeding from 1967 to 1969: 50 percent more than the average number between 1959 and 1983

Another example: you could take a sample survey of bible quotes in the proceedings. This is less simple, however. Who quoted what, when and why? Was there in increase or decrease and why?

You can also look for references to World War Two for example.

This has been tried by the NIOD, the Dutch Institute specialized in the Second World War. With little success.

There are limitations to what may be found in the proceedings.

You must have the expertise to ask the right questions and the skills to know where to look first

17.

I will end with the key questions I mentioned:

Can these digitized proceedings offer new and better ways to realize traditional research goals?

It is an important and time saving practical tool if you hold on to old objectives

Digitized proceedings also make it easier to track down innovative elements and conceptual change.

This leads to a better understanding of parliamentary history

Can these digitzed proceedings completely change our understanding of what parliamentary history might be?

I think they can if we cooperate and set new goals.

But proceedings of one country often are incomparable to the proceedings of another country

You cannot compare apples to oranges

So different political cultures as well as different definitions of particular concepts have to be taken into account

Thank you.