Legal Research

Here?s to the next 200 hundred years Hansard...

Posted on March 06, 2008
...this is big news okay mabye not that big, but it transpires that the Goverment is planning to make 200 years worth of Hansard debates available online.The even better news is that some Hansard Debates are already available online and I'm not just talking about the debates available on the UK Parliament website...

BIALL website feedback survey

Posted on March 04, 2008
Apologies for cross-posting, but we'd like to get as many responses as possible! We in the Web Committee are very much interested in getting some feedback from users of the BIALL website. In order to facilitate this, we have constructed a quick survey to gather opinions about the current BIALL website, and the direction that you would like it to go in...

MSC activities update

Posted on February 29, 2008
Membership Services Committee (MSC) has been planning its activities around the forthcoming conference.Thank you to all those who responded to the questions on mentoring for new delegates at conference. It was good to have a range of responses from seasoned delegates as well as those for whom Dublin will be their first event...

A new approach to Members? Forum

Posted on February 29, 2008
If you are attending this year?s conference you will notice that Members? Forum has been renamed ?Have your say??.The new name is not the only change. The Membership Services Committee (MSC) are looking at ways to encourage discussion and would like members to use this blog to post any suggestions or questions...

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Cheese...if you please

Posted on February 28, 2008
Tomorrow will see BIALL members gather for the now Annual Cheese and Wine Party.The Cheese and Wine Party is always an extremely well attended event so for anybody is going tomorrow the BIALL Bloggers look forward to seeing you there.

Not quite the Brits...

Posted on February 21, 2008
...but there are still loads of reasons why you should add your nomination to those already received by the Awards and Bursaries Committee.Every year BIALL recognises and rewards the high levels of service and professional commitment achieved by individuals and services working within the legal information/law library sector...

Law Firm Librarians play crucial intelligence role (Part 2)

Posted on February 20, 2008
Following swiftly on from a previous blog post Sweet & Maxwell/Thomson have emailed me to say that they are not planning to publish the research discussed in the Law Society Gazette article but they are happy to send the presentation, which is a summary of the results, to anyone who is interested...

Law firm librarians play crucial intelligence role..

Posted on February 14, 2008
...is the title of a story on page 6 of this weeks Law Society Gazette (14/02/2008) in it the author discusses the results of a report published by Sweet & Maxwell (unfortunately not available online at present) which shows that librarians have exchanged their traditional roles of researching changes in the law to supplying commerically foucsed information...

The Past, Present & Future of Legal Information

Posted on February 05, 2008
Lexis Nexis Butterworths have made this seminar available here for all to view. Unfortunately I'm not able to view this video but no doubt the Richard Susskind speech will be interesting, as will the Q&A session, with questions including;What might Web 2...

Law Librarianship in 2007 : A review

Posted on February 05, 2008
Fiona Durrant, BIALL Council Member and Loyita Worley, editor of the BIALL Handbook of Legal Information have co-written a piece for the latest CILIP update. The piece is a review of developments during 2007 and a look at what the future holds for Law Librarianship...

Law Society Library online

Posted on January 30, 2008
Monday the 28th of January saw the launch of a new site from The Law Society library called Law Society Library Online, the site was built in collaboration with LexisNexis.The site is available free of charge but registering will allow you to access "member only" benefits" which include access to;Queries and Enquiries Database with sources for specific precedents and answers to many legal information enquiries, based on the experience of the Library team...

Transcripts Guide...the Wiki

Posted on January 29, 2008
The Inner Temple Library have started the process of updating their guide to finding the Transcripts of Judicial Proceedings in England & Wales. To facilitate the updating of this guide, which will eventually be available in PDF format, the Inner Temple have created a Wiki which all BIALL members are invited to edit or add content as appropriate...

BIALL Study Seminar - Edinburgh, December 6 - 7

Posted on January 25, 2008
This year?s study seminar in Edinburgh looked like a Nurofen for my work headaches: targeted relief for pain. And (to rip off another slogan) it did what it said on the tin!The setting was the wonderful Signet Library in Parliament Square, hosted by Elaine Bird and the BIALL Professional Development Committee...

Building a Legal Research toolbar

Posted on January 24, 2008
This article by Jennifer W Greig will be of interest to anyone who is considering developing a search solution that provides access to "sanctioned" resources.In it the author describes how they designed and eventually delivered the toolbar to their students.

LNB Global Platform Mailing List

Posted on January 17, 2008
The Legal Information Group will close the Lexis Nexis Butterworths (LNB) Global Platform Mailing List on the 7/2/2008.This list was established in 2005 for BIALL members to discuss the implementation of the Global Platform. Since then the platform has undergone a number of functional and technical changes which have made it more usable...

Library 2.0 initiatives in Academic Libraries

Posted on January 09, 2008
The Association of Research and College Libraries (ARCL) in the U.S have released a new publication which may be of interest to BIALL members. Entitled "Library 2.0 initiatives in Academic Libraries" this is a hybrid publication which uses a Wiki to display content in chapters...

Format shifting...

Posted on January 09, 2008
Not as I had hoped the working title of the sequel to Transformers but one of a series of proposals put forward by the UK Goverment as part of its consultation on the future of copyright in the digital age."Fomat shifting" if legislated will give greater freedom to consumers to transfer content between CD's and MP3 players and other devices...

OPSI now "as revised"

Posted on January 04, 2008
A recent addition to the OPSI website is the inclusion of "As Revised" statutes, this means that when visting the OPSI Website users have the option to retrieve Statutes as revised as well as enacted. Have a look at the Channel Tunnel Act for an example...

Merry Christmas

Posted on December 21, 2007
Merry Christmas to all BIALL Members and readers of the blog! See you all in the New Year.The Blog Team

How to...expand

Posted on December 19, 2007
Despite the fact it is Christmas I'm not talking about expanding waistlines. In fact what is referred to here is the strategy of Professional Publishing Companies which has seen them move from single volume print publishers to suppliers of "integrated content"Leading this change is Reed Elsevier (LNB) who are the subject of an article on the Times Online...

Publishers Association Annual Conference 2008

Posted on December 12, 2007
The Publishers Association have released the details of their Annual Conference for 2008. Called "What does Higher Education want from Publishers?" the conference will look at the "impact that publishers make on today?s learning experience" More information and registration forms are available on the Publisher Associations website.

New CLA Licence is launched

Posted on December 06, 2007
The CLA has introduced a new licence for the Adult Education sector. The enhanced Trial Scanning Licence is now available to all Adult and Community Education and Learning (ACL) providers.The licence allows for the creation of Digital Copies made from print originals owned by the licensee and for those Digital Copies to be used with technologies such as digital whiteboards, within Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) including email and fax.

Is ACAP ahead of the pack?

Posted on December 06, 2007
A joint standard which has been developed by the publishing industry, working with search engines was launched at the end of last month. The ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) initiative allows online content owners to grant search engines like Google rights to "display" their content in search results...

Westlaw/Lawtel User Group 2007

Posted on November 28, 2007
The Westlaw/Lawtel London User Group was held at the "hip" Adnaz Hotel on Liverpool Street yesterday. The most interesting things to come out of the meeting were the Westlaw developments planned for 2008, some highlights includedCasesThe loading of more English ReportsThe loading of more unreported transcriptsLegislationMore PDF'sCummulative footnotesFuture versions (so now you can go back and foward in time!)Journals6 more journal titlesCirculation list functionality and list management- this sounds greatIn terms of the interface, there will links to and from Lawtel and RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for pre-defined content and content that you have searched for...

AALL Vendor Relations

Posted on November 22, 2007
The American Association of Law Librarians (AALL) have developed a new page specifically for the work they do with Vendors and their relationships with Vendors.There are a whole host of tools available on page of the AALL Group that works with vendors, The Committee on Relations with Information Vendors (CRIV) including the AALL Fair Business Practices Guide, the U...

Will Lexis Nexis and Westlaw survive?

Posted on November 15, 2007
An announcement today in the U.S. looks like it could challenge the dominance of Lexis Nexis and Westlaw when it comes to the provision of U.S. Case Law.Public Resource.org and Fastcase.com have said that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754...

FT unveils the future

Posted on November 15, 2007
Further to announcements by Lexis Nexis from the 1st of April 2008 Financial Times Content will only be available via third party applications if you have a content licence from the Financial Times, the reasoning behind this is as follows, with more information on their website;"As third party channels multiply, we want to ensure a fair and transparent means of delivering our valuable content...

Work in progress

Posted on November 03, 2007
There will be some changes taking place to the look and feel of the blog over the weekend.Apologies for any inconvenience and strangeness that may result.

Legal publishers and RSS

Posted on November 01, 2007
There has recently been a bit of a stir amongst the UK legal library bloggers regarding the issue of legal publishers and RSS for new books ? namely, that they aren?t doing it.Lo-Fi Librarian started the ball rolling with her post lamenting that the UK publishers haven?t quite caught up with their Canadian brethren...

Reed leads the way

Posted on November 01, 2007
The 2007 Livres Hebdo report has confirmed that Reed Elsevier have been the biggest global publisher in 2007, other Legal Publishers who rank highly in the report are;Thomson (3)LexisNexis (5)Wolters Kluwer (10)Informa (15)There is some interesting information in the "Groups Close up" part of the report.

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