INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the start of a new year of Legal Information Management. 2015 promises to be a momentous year with the 800th anniversary celebration of that most famous of legal documents, the Magna Carta. In due course there will an article published in LIM as part of our recognition of the importance of the Magna Carta as a legal document in our democratic society.
LAW, GENDER AND SEXUALITY: SOURCES AND METHODS IN SOCIO-LEGAL RESEARCH
To begin 2015, LIM has published a range of articles based on talks given at a national training day held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) on 19 May 2014, and co-organised by IALS, the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) and the British Library. I am indebted to Jon Sims of the British Library for his dedication to the task of, not only helping to coordinate the training day itself, but, subsequently, to encouraging the presenters to produce papers for inclusion here in this spring issue of LIM. The results speak for themselves and a glance at the contents list will reveal something of the extent of the interest in the field of ‘law, gender and sexuality’ which also has an emphasis on the sources and methods by which socio-legal research into this area can be conducted. Jon and I are extremely grateful to both our academic scholars and our library colleagues for their contributions to this theme. We are also grateful to David Gee at IALS for his support of this training day. I leave the rest of the introduction to this topic to Jon himself and his Guest Editorial piece which follows on the next page.
CURRENT ISSUES
Under the Current Issues section you will find three articles. Firstly, Ginevra Peruginelli discusses the issues around evaluating research especially in the context of the discipline of law. In academia this is a highly relevant topic, especially in the UK following the publication and ranking, in December 2014, of universities following the outcome of the latest REF (Research Excellence Framework). Ginevra takes an international perspective and offers her own thoughts on this subject. Allie Lustigman writes about ‘how information professionals can add value to intranets and portals’ in their firms and, finally in this section, Jackie Fishleigh provides a summary of the issues concerning data privacy and protection.
CURRENT AWARENESS
Lastly, as usual, readers will discover our regular feature, the Current Awareness section, that has been compiled by Katherine Read and Laura Griffiths at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, particular thanks go to our colleagues at Cambridge University Press, especially Sue Perkins and Hannah Patrick, and to all the members of the LIM Editorial Board including the Chair of that committee, Dunstan Speight and the team of proof-readers to whom I am always truly grateful.
