Elizabeth Marley describes the addition of subject and other indexing metadata at the UK Parliament, contributing to the internal databases and to services to the public on the Parliamentary website, and the operation of the thesauri and controlled vocabularies used in enriching Parliamentary content.

Peter Jordan and Helen Lippell describe the role of metadata, including taxonomies, in re-designing the flagship government website, Directgov.

Martin Jones of Advice Services Alliance describes a specialist classification scheme and thesaurus devised for use by the general public when searching for legal advice on free websites, and explains how it is implemented and maintained.

Katherine Dawson, from Citizens Advice Information Team, explains how they have developed and maintain two separate databases of information, using various metadata and classification tools. Adviceguide is a free site for the general public to access information on the legal and societal issues of daily living. Advisernet is a more detailed site giving in-depth information to advisers working in Bureaux.

Guy Holborn, Librarian of Gray's Inn, gives some very practical help on how to catalogue the law collection whilst ensuring compliance with cataloguing standards

Derek Sturdy explains the importance of search engine optimisation for the legal information professional involved in the organisation's website in the Google era and suggests that the most important pieces of information are the title and the abstract. He also discusses the rise in automatic classification in the enterprise search context.

The internet provides access to a huge amount of information, and most people experience problems with information overload rather than scarcity. Glenda Browne explains how indexing provides a way of increasing retrieval of relevant information from the content available. Manual, book-style indexes can be created for websites and individual web documents such as online books. Keyword metadata is a crucial behind the scenes aid to improved search engine functioning, and categorisation, social bookmarking and automated indexing also play a part.

Catherine O'Sullivan of Norton Rose outlines the benefits of using the Moys scheme in a large law firm library. She also briefly discusses how the firm has tailored it to their specific requirements and she finishes by pointing out the potential disadvantages of the scheme.

Vanda Broughton describes the methodology of constructing a thesaurus from a faceted classification for law (Bliss Bibliographic Classification 2nd ed. Class S). The structure of the classification is described, and the way in which the thesaural relationships are derived from this is demonstrated. Recent work to automate the process, using the encoded classification data used for the schedule display and alphabetical index, is explained. Examples of the way in which this functions are included, and an analysis of the output shows where editorial work will help to improve the resulting thesaurus.

Stella Dextre Clarke, our Guest Editor, provides an update on the latest developments nationally and internationally on producing standards for the creation of controlled vocabularies. After many years of inaction the advent of the worldwide web has stimulated the need for wholesale revision of existing standards and the introduction of new ones.

Andrew Coburn the 2009 Chairman of the CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group describes its activities, including continuing professional development, in the form of meetings and courses; work on standards and the opportunities it provides for networking.

This article by Katie Woolf, formerly of the Government Knowledge and Information Network, looks at the new UK Government strategy for knowledge and information (KIM). Led by the Knowledge Council, the strategy sets out the principles and actions government must take to develop the capability it needs to manage corporate knowledge and information as the key business assets they are. It discusses how the strategy will be achieved through a departmental delivery model, the relationship of the strategy with the Information Assurance agenda post data loss scandals, and the need for senior leader engagement to be the driving force to building a culture that values KIM.

This article by former law librarian, Jennifer Smith, highlights access and security issues to consider when handling sensitive information. Jennifer is a Director of the Information Management and IT consultancy, OneIS, which specialises in working with smaller organisations with complex information management requirements. The article provides practical advice and is particularly aimed at readers working in organisations without dedicated information security professionals.

This article results from the Pre-Conference Seminar presented at the BIALL Conference in June 2009 by Victoria Jannetta and Pamela Wolffsohn. Having both raised their Information Department's profiles in a better economic climate, they shared how they created opportunities to establish good positioning in their firms. They also addressed the challenges we now face in these frostier times. This was a workshop and was brought to life by spirited discussions, potential solutions and ideas on how to deal with problems faced by many of us – reduced resources and headcount.

John Furlong attended the Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of Law Librarians (CALL/ACBD) and was particularly interested in the sessions involving the way in which clients are now taught about legal materials and the importance of teaching internet literacy or “neteracy”.

Tax, (both corporate and personal tax) is one of the five main departments at City law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP. In the following article, Dunstan Speight, Library Manager, considers the resources needed to support a tax practice and how these relate to the research requirements of tax lawyers.

Fiona Fogden discusses how negotiation skills can be applied within the information service. She uses a case-study, which involves evaluating the renewal of a news subscription service and the importance of considering which people may be involved in that negotiation, to illustrate her advice.

In the first in our series of very short articles devoted to practical library and information management issues, Dean Mason from Salans provides helpful advice on how to set up a business continuity plan for your information service.