Legal Research

A light grilling...

Posted on June 02, 2008
Jennefer Aston current BIALL Chair and native Dubliner has very kindly agreed to answer some questions for the BIALL Blog about her tenure, Dublin and the Conference that takes place next week.The ConferenceThere are only 10 days to the start of the Conference, what reasons would you give for attending?With only 10 days to go until the start of the conference I am delighted that we will have over 400 delegates this year so a great opportunity for networking & professional development, a bigger exhibition with more suppliers, and of course location - you absolutely should come to Dublin...

Last...but certainly not least

Posted on June 02, 2008
In a minor change to the Conference Programme the very last session of the Conference will see Samantha Steer from Sweet & Maxwell talk about Information Managers in the 21st Century.Samantha will cover key findings from the Sweet & Maxwell Survey "Information Managers in the 21st Century" which was previously mentioned on the BIALL Blog The Survey was conducted in September 2007, prompted by the changes in the legal market, including the changes that will follow from the Legal Services Act, and the wider availability of new technology, allowing the faster delivery of legal information...

Second Life use in UK HE/FE establishments

Posted on May 30, 2008
This report which was originally reported on the Tame the Web Blog may be of interest to any BIALL members working in Higher Education or Further Education establishments.

Has the FT Licence Strategy come good?

Posted on May 30, 2008
There have been a lot of reports recently, including a report on the Information World Review Blog of the FT Licence Strategy being a "success"According to the reports So far"280 organisations have entered into direct customer agreements. The FT has also made separate agreements with 12 news aggregators, which are licensed to provide unlimited access to FT content for organisations with a direct agreement"Caspar De Bono B2B managing director of the FT is quoted as saying " he was pleased with the takeup of the licences: ?Sales that come as a result of these new licences are equal to what we used to get under the direct model; from a financial point of view the transition is working...

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Are you following a yellow brick road?

Posted on May 28, 2008
In a slight change to the BIALL Conference programme Parallel Session 3/4 is now called "Web 2.0: the Yellow Brick Road or Fool's Gold? An Interactive Panel Discussion" ever the opportunist the BIALL Blogger contacted the speakers (Sue Hill (SH) and Martin de Saulles (MS) for their thoughts on Web 2...

New Blogs on the Block

Posted on May 23, 2008
Two new Blogs have recently found their way into our RSS Reader, which BIALL Members might be interested in, they are:The Scottish Libraries Blog From the About section "The blog is intended to complement our existing electronic content and services on the SLAINTE website and our Pagecast...

Super speedy Bailii search

Posted on May 21, 2008
Bailii is a wonderful resource, but sometimes searching it can be a little time-consuming. One enterprising individual has created a super fast simplified search page for Bailii, for those times that the normal Bailii just isn't fast enough. Great example of someone making the most of free resources to help them get their job done more efficiently!

Interested in Scottish Legislation...

Posted on May 19, 2008
...then you'll definitely want to take a look at the newly created archive of the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament. The site contains Acts from 1235 to 1707.[Thanks to Jennie Law for spotting this]

Outsourcing your information?

Posted on May 19, 2008
Nobody likes to think about let alone talk about Outsourcing information services or roles, but this was one of the issues discussed at the recent Perfect Information Conference. The IWR Blog has report from the session.

Bills before Parliament

Posted on May 16, 2008
The web team responsible for the Bills before Parliament site have started the next stage of development work on these pages. If you use these pages regularly then they would love to hear from you, particularly around: What tasks you are trying to carry out when using these pages? Where do you currently have to go to find additional information not easily presented through these pages? Is there anything you would like to find but can't? Following earlier user feedback they are already looking to develop: Email alerts & RSS feeds at the individual Bill level and alerts for multiple bills...

Four events in four weeks

Posted on May 15, 2008
With only fours weeks to go until the start of the BIALL Conference some of you may be thinking what else is happening in Dublin, well the BIALL Blog has done some research and is pleased to say there are some notable events happening which BIALL members might be interested in...

LACA wants more!

Posted on May 12, 2008
The first round of consultation on recommendations in Andrew Gowers ? December 2006 report on intellectual property law (including copyright) has concluded with the Libraries and Copyright Alliance (LACA) arguing that there should be wider exceptions...

Still time to Have Your Say...!

Posted on May 06, 2008
http://biall.blogspot.com/2008/04/have-your-say.htmlHave a look at the original post (link above) about Have Your Say at Dublin. Does anything else spring to mind? What's that question you have always wanted to ask about BIALL, its committees, publications, services, membership...

Dublin Buddies

Posted on May 06, 2008
Don't forget that if you are a new delegate at this year's Conference, you can sign up to the Buddy scheme.This will pair you up with another new delegate to help you find your feet quickly at the event.If you didn't opt for this at the time of booking, it's not too late - contact Helen Williams hewilliams@lincoln...

Dublin a Brief Guide

Posted on April 28, 2008
With only six weeks to go until the BIALL Conference the countdown begins with a series of posts on what you could do whilst in Dublin, apart from attend the conference of course! First up is a link to a guide written by Joe Donnelly (a member of the Legal Information Group) and a native Dubliner!In the next post...

The Old Bailey Online

Posted on April 28, 2008
The Old Bailey has just launched a comprehensive archive of the 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court between 1674-1913.This looks like an interesting site where much time could be spent!

Reuters and Thomson now ThomsonReuters

Posted on April 23, 2008
On April the 17th, Thomson announced that it had completed its acquisition of Reuters Group, PLC, forming no prizes for guessing... Thomson Reuters, but what household names are actually now part of ThomsonReuters, well here is a selection:FindLawWestWestlawRoundHallSweet & MaxwellW Green...

Thomson Reuters

Posted on April 17, 2008
Annoucements have been sent to subscribers this morning about the formation today from Thomson Corporation and Reuters Group PLC of Thomson Reuters. Their new logo is shown above. If you have representatives with the e-mail address @thomson.com - this will be changing to @thomsonreuters...

Should we Spring into a Wiki?

Posted on April 17, 2008
One of the suggestions from the latest Butterworths Electronic User Group (BEUG) was that Lexis Nexis Butterworths (LNB) use a Wiki or Blog to let their customers know about the Spring release of the Global Platform and to keep them updated about any changes, including the removal and addition of content and updates to the system itself...

Do YOU Hein?

Posted on April 17, 2008
Another update from HeinOnline, this week they have announced that they have released their own channel on YOUTube. The channel has videos on how-to find information on the HeinOnline collections, general searching and navigation and ther useful tips and tricks for using the HeinOnline interface.

LN Update

Posted on April 16, 2008
I (Fiona Durrant) attended the LNB Legal Product Advisory Board (PAB) at Halsbury house last week and on Monday attended the Butterworths Electronic User Group (BEUG).The PAB was just about LNB and is more an opportunity for Librarians to feed in what they think about just LNB so they can decide what to prioritize with regard to development...

Has the Internet Failed to Provide Public Access to Law?

Posted on April 11, 2008
That is the question asked by Outlaw in an interview with BAILII Executive Director Joe Ury. BAILII has been working on the Open Law Project, which will see them publish the 3000 most important decisions in English common law to the BAILII Website.As part of this project BAILLI approached academics at leading institutions and asked them what they considered to be imporant decisions in their areas of expertise...

LexisNexis become FT Channel Partner

Posted on April 07, 2008
Further to recent posts on this topic, the FT have announced that LexisNexis have agreed to be a channel partner and will carry FT content after 1 April 2008.

Have Your Say!

Posted on April 03, 2008
A reminder that 'Have Your Say' at the BIALL Conference will consider issues raised via this blog as well as those from the conference floor.So if you're not able to attend this year, but have a burning issue to raise, this is the place to do it via the comments...

21st Century Bills

Posted on March 28, 2008
In a bid for best campaign name ever, They Work For You have started a campaign to 'Gently Encourage Parliament to Publish Bills in a 21st Century Way'.They Work For You are encouraging parliament to release all bills in XML - not just legislation but actions of agencies, court rulings, budgets, etc...

HeinOnline has been scholared

Posted on March 28, 2008
Peter Scott's Library Blog is reporting that Google Scholar is now indexing the Law Journals in HeinOnline to make the more than 1,100 titles searchable in the Google Scholar interface.Full instructions on how to search Google Scholar for HeinOnline journals are available here.

The FT go West

Posted on March 25, 2008
Following on from the previous post on this topic the FT have now confirmed that West will be one of the channel partners licensed to carry FT content after April 1st where the client has a digital licence with the FT.The FT remain hopeful that they will sign a licence with Lexis Nexis and will advise the Legal Information Group Vice Chair of any developments in this respect.

Legal Information Group and the FT Content Licence

Posted on March 18, 2008
Posted on behalf of Chrissy Street;A number of BIALL members have raised questions about the new licensing model announced by the Financial Times last year. As BIALL LIG Vice Chair I met with Caspar de Bono (Managing Director, B2B) and James Mann (UK Circulation and Content Sales Director) of the FT last week to raise some of the questions, the meeting was also attended by Jas Breslin (Council Member)...

Beyond Discovery...

Posted on March 10, 2008
...also known as the Bloomsbury Conference which is being organised by the CILIP Commercial, Legal and Scientific Information Group have a free delegate place up for grabs.All you have do is write 200 words on:"How attendance at the Bloomsbury Conference would benefit my professional development...

Are Law Libraries becoming obsolete...?

Posted on March 10, 2008
...well the good news is no according to this article from the Birmingham Business Journal, the bad news is that more and more Libraries are being "downsized" in favour of less "traditional" means of finding information, in other words electronic databases...

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