Legal Research

What should we be calling ourselves?

Posted on October 23, 2009
Changing the name of any organisation can be contentious so a recent blot post on the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog caught our eye. Called "Am I A Librarian Or A Strategic Knowledge Professional?" the post looks at the annoucement by the Special Libraries Association (SLA) to their change their name to the "Association of Strategic Knowledge Professionals"The author also includes some comments from SLA members within the blog post...

All EU Publications Now Available Online, Free

Posted on October 20, 2009
The EU Bookshop has launched their digital library where '12 million scanned pages in more than 110,000 EU publications are available free of charge for download', eGov Monitor reports.The new digital library was launched at the Frankfurt Book Fair on the 16th of October and offers all publications edited by the Publications Office on behalf of the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies since 1952...

Speed Dating ? with a difference!

Posted on October 13, 2009
Once a year, CILIP hosts a Graduate Day providing help, support and advice to those who are considering a career in the library and information sector. As a part of this day, BIALL?s President Daniella King was joined by Tracey Dennis of the Inner Temple Library to be a part of a Speed Networking Panel...

What does your organisation block?

Posted on October 12, 2009
The 3 Geeks and a Law Blog have published the results of a survey underaken by Elaine Dockens, Library Director for Tressler LLP in Chicago in their blog post "Computer use in your organization"Elaine surveyed a small group of Law Librarians about their firms policies on computer usage...

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New Supreme Court justices sworn in by... themselves

Posted on October 05, 2009
On 1 October, the new Supreme Court was opened for business and the justices were sworn in, the Times reports:In the ceremony that took place in the Middlesex Guildhall in Parliament Square, "the deputy president of the court swore the President in, the President swore in the deputy and then the President ? Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers ? swore in everyone else...

Rate your legal information suppliers

Posted on October 01, 2009
Joe Hodnicki of the Law Librarian Blog has created a short survey, which BIALL members might be interested in completing. The survey looks at relationships between Librarians and their legal information suppliers.The focus of the survey is of course on US legal suppliers, but it will be interesting to see what the results are...

Evaluating Law Library services

Posted on September 21, 2009
Ron Friedman at Prism Legal reports in his post "Slashing BigLaw Libraries" on the results of the AM Law 200 survey of Law Libraries.Some highlights from his blog post:About 1/2 of the 86 responding librarians reported cutting budgets and almost 60% cutting staff...

What a wonderful world we live in: the future of Legal Research

Posted on September 21, 2009
According to this article from the Huffington Post "The Reinvention of Legal Research" these are wondorous times in the world of online publishing. The author of the article Peter Schwarz makes five points which are well considered in a blog post from the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog, they are;Data Trumps documentsInformation is liquidInformation is a commodity Customers will not pay for research Large legal publishers are in troubleThe original article and the the post from the 3 Geeks and a Law Blog are well worth a quick read.

What does the Google book settlement really mean?

Posted on September 18, 2009
Early this summer Google and representatives of rights owners and publishers in the US came to an agreement on how to settle the copyright and other legal issues in relation to the Book Search Project but what is Google Books and what will the agreement Google have made with publishers in the US mean?In the YouTube video below "Nathan" an engineer from the Google Books team talks about how Google books can be used and the agreement they've reached with publishers...

BIALL's 40th Birthday Party

Posted on September 18, 2009
BIALL's 40th Birthday party took place on Friday the 11th of September at Delfina, sponsored by Justis the night was a colourful celebration of 40 years of work by BIALL.You can view all the photos taken on the night on BIALL's flickr page.

Supreme Court Website

Posted on September 07, 2009
The launch of the new Supreme Court website should be of interest to all BIALL members. From the new website "The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal in the UK for civil cases. It hears appeals in criminal cases from England, Wales and Northern Ireland...

Salary Survey 2009

Posted on September 07, 2009
The Salary Survey 2009 is now available for download from the members' area of the BIALL website.Follow the links from the Publications section to the members-only archive for this year's survey and for past years too, back to 2003.Sara BattsMembership Services Committee

Looking for some inspiration?

Posted on September 04, 2009
With only a week to go until BIALL's 40th Birthday Party, the question everyone is asking is what to wear? Well if you're looking for some inspiration then we recommend the following sites;Fashion-era.comSixties CityRetrowowSixties Fashion at the V&AFrom the look of some of the pictures available on the Web it could be a colourful night in more than one way!

Moys Classification

Posted on August 27, 2009
The Publications Committee is looking at producing a new edition of Moys which was lastpublished in 2001.Diana Morris will be editing the 5th edition with the assistance of other volunteers. Diana was Librarian / Research Services Manager at Slaughter and May before retiring in December 2007...

BIALL Conference 2010 - Call for papers?

Posted on August 19, 2009
CALL FOR PAPERSRisks and Opportunities ? Managing Resources in Difficult TimesBIALL 41st Annual Study Conference & ExhibitionThursday 10 June 2010 to Saturday 12 June 2010, BrightonABOUT THE ASSOCIATIONThe British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) was formed in 1969...

From the House of Lords to the Supreme Court

Posted on August 13, 2009
If you didn't know already on the 30th of July the House of Lords handed down its last judgment. From October its judicial function will be taken on by the new Supreme Court.In this five minute video Lord Mance, one of the 12 Law Lords in the House of Lords, outlines the key changes to the judicial role of Parliament...

TFPL and Intelligent Resources merge

Posted on August 05, 2009
Information World Review noted in yesterday's article that TFPL and Intelligent Resources have merged.'TFPL, the recruitment, training and consulting division of specialist information and knowledge management company IDOX has merged its recruitment division with Intelligent Resources, a specialist permanent recruitment business'...

Apollo completes BPP takeover

Posted on August 04, 2009
Today's article in THE announced that Apollo, an American for-profit higher education company has just completed its acquisition of BPP for £368 million.BPP Law School and the College of Law are Britain's two biggest professional legal education providers...

Make sure you receive your BIALL Newsletter

Posted on July 30, 2009
It is usual for bulk mail outs to be blocked by certain mail servers, even legitimate ones. If you haven't yet received your July newletter, this could be why.We advise members to check spam/junk folders and to "whitelist" the email address (list@biall...

West salutes law librarians

Posted on July 30, 2009
Feeling a bit down, then have a look at this video which was shown at the recent AALL Conference. The video, produced by West is part of a campaign in the US which aims to "salute law librarians" and the critical role they play in managing knowledge and information on behalf of the organizations they represent.

Green Book is being renamed...."The Green Book"

Posted on July 28, 2009
Lexis Nexis (LN) has officially acknowledged that the Civil Court Practice is indeed called the 'Green Book'. This is after Law Librarians have been doing so for some years, but it's good to know we're all on the same page...In an update sent out by LN, it announced "the online name for the Civil Court Practice 2009 is changing to The Civil Court Practice 2009 (The Green Book)...

Thinking about joining BIALL?

Posted on July 26, 2009
If you're not currently a member of the British & Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) it's great that you're reading our blog but have you ever thought about becoming a member?You might not have realised that there are many many benefits associated with doing so, which If I could remember them I would list here, but instead I'll point everyone in the direction of "Why being a member of a professional association can be important"This document, which has been produced by Daniella King (BIALL President) explains why memberships to organisations like BIALL are important...

JISC - Libraries of the future

Posted on July 24, 2009
JISC the organisation that ?inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies?, has published a 10-minute documentary on Libraries of the Future.Enjoy - [Hat tip - The iLibrarian]

Cuts at King's College London and beyond

Posted on July 21, 2009
"Thousands of university jobs are at risk across the sector, according to a report published this week by the University and College Union," the THES reported last week.In a press release from KCL's Kevin Shelley:King's College London is proposing to make all 30 current roles of the Information Resources team part of ISS (Information Services & Systems) redundant and make staff re-apply for their own jobs...

The 'Edgeless University' and new technologies

Posted on July 20, 2009
'Edgeless University: why higher education must embrace technology', the report commissioned by JISC, warns that UK universities may lose their edge in education unless they adopt new learning models and technologies.At the moment four of the top ten universityies in the world are British and the UK is a popular choice for international students...

BIALL appoint its first VP!

Posted on July 15, 2009
Since October 2008, BIALL has been able to appointment someone to the honorary position of Vice President (VP) of BIALL. This position, which is a term of 3 years is for someone whose involvement on Council would be advantageous to the association.BIALL is therefore pleased to announce that Chris Holland (Librarian at the Law Society) has been appointed as our first VP...

Bloomsbury Publishing acquires Tottel Publishing

Posted on July 08, 2009
In an interesting move Bloomsbury Publishing have has entered into an agreement to acquire Tottel Publishing Limited. Once completed Tottel Publishing Ltd will be renamed Bloomsbury Professional.Bloomsbury Publishing which is most famous for publishing the Harry Potter series has according to the press release on their website...

How do I exactly?

Posted on July 01, 2009
The BIALL How Do I? wki was launched during the Manchester conference during "Have your say" The site which uses free software from PBWorks began life as a space for the PR committee to share information and organise their committee meetings and then became a platform for members of the committee to save useful answers posted to the LIS-LAW email distribution list...

THES on Arnold and ebooks

Posted on July 01, 2009
Last month the Guardian reported that the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has a budget deficit of over $24 billion, thinks he can make savings by getting rid of ?expensive textbooks? in schools by replacing them with ebooks.Tara Brabazon's article from the Times Higher Education Supplement, questions whether in this case, educational technology has been 'introduced to cut costs in resources, not to enhance existing standards'...

City Information Group ceases trading

Posted on July 01, 2009
It was with great sadness that BIALL today learnt that the City Information Group has ceased trading.According to the press release which was issued earlier today, the group has been seriously affected by the downturn that has affected many individuals, organisations and firms within the City...

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