BC Hansard Index: a roadmap to parliamentary debates

Parliamentary indexing provides a unique opportunity to work in a collaborative environment with other indexers, to learn about legislative procedure and political issues, and to contribute to the democratic process as a part of the larger Hansard team. This article shows how the British Columbia Hansard index team provides products and services for mapping information retrieval in the official Hansard transcripts. It also describes some challenges to indexing parliamentary debates, including the technical process and timelines that indexers work with on a daily basis. It concludes with a description of the skills needed to become a Hansard indexer.