Whilst preparing for my talk at the BIALL Conference and bearing in mind the session during which I was speaking, it struck me how many things had changed since I started out in law librarianship. The foremost of these is definitely the development of information technology, which has had an immediate and prolonged impact on how we provide services to our users in both law firms and in academic libraries. This is something of which we are all aware – the shift from paper, firstly to CD Rom, then online and latterly to internet based services.

Most of these sites contain very good sets of links, both to other Government sites and to other sources of legal information. It is by no means comprehensive, as a comprehensive list would require far more space than is available here, and would also become outdated far more quickly than this selective list. The important thing to remember is that the information is, usually, out there somewhere.

The South African law library holds a similar function to that of its English counterpart. It provides a primary source to describe the law and how it has changed and grown over time. South African attorneys fulfil a similar role to solicitors and South African advocates can be equated with barristers. While attorneys have recently gained rights of audience in the High Court, most attorneys continue to brief advocates in complex matters due to their specialised knowledge and skills.

By the Spring of this year, if all goes to plan, there will be changes to our current laws on copyright. EC Directive 2001/29/EC on the Harmonisation of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society is soon to be implemented into legislation in all Member States. This article describes the reasons behind the changes, what the changes are and how they affect the library and information sector.

The Scotland Act 1998 which established the Scottish Parliament confers on that Parliament the power to make laws which are known as Acts of the Scottish Parliament. However, the legislative competence of the Parliament is restricted. The main restriction relates to reserved matters, that is those matters which the UK Parliament has not devolved to the Scottish Parliament. These are listed in sch 5 to the Act and cover such matters as defence, taxation, social security and macro-economics. Other significant restrictions on the Parliament's legislative competence are that an Act of the Scottish Parliament cannot make any provision which is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) or with European Community law, nor can an Act of the Scottish Parliament modify certain “protected enactments” - including most provisions of the Scotland Act 1998 itself and the Human Rights Act I 998. Finally, an Act of the Scottish Parliament cannot have effect outside Scotland, nor can it remove the Lord Advocate from his position as head of the systems of criminal prosecutions and investigation of deaths in Scotland. An Act of the Scottish Parliament is not law so far as any provision of it is outside the Parliament's legislative competence

I came to Thailand 18 months ago. An amazing opportunity had arisen to work in Bangkok and as my ‘other half’ was also being transferred, off we set. The contract was to work in our Bangkok office for 2/3 years in a regional role supplying commercial information and research to the five Asian offices and, of course, experience the life of another country.

Does the following scenario sound familiar? You have an enormous amount of data that needs putting into some sort of coherent order. Your external Web site and company intranet contain vast numbers of documents and offer links to yet more information sources, all containing yet more data.

Your role in this deluge of information often leaves you feeling as though you are running to stand still. There are thousands of users (company employees as well as external browsers) searching for thousands of different documents and you have the unenviable job of making all of this information available to them in an efficient manner. Too much data, too little data, or data which is inaccurate are all potential problems to a user.

In the United Kingdom the electoral roll or register is one of the most fundamental resources for accessing information about adult UK residents. Apart from the register itself, third parties have traditionally made use of the raw name and address data to provide members of the public or certain professions access to derived databases, data sets or re-packaged raw data.

From the 1960s to the late 1980s, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library produced an annual List of Current Legal Research Topics. The most recent annual issue was published in 1988 and listed the subjects of research currently being pursued (i.e. provisional dissertation titles) by students registered for research degrees in law (e.g. PhD, MPhil) at higher education institutions in the UK.

It took just a simple e-mail in the Autumn of 2000 to set the ball rolling towards one of the most informative, enjoyable and interesting professional experiences I've ever had. The e-mail in question was a request to fill in a questionnaire from the Foreign Comparative and International Law Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries. The questionnaire concerned participation in AALL's Clearinghouse for Internships & International Personnel Exchanges. This is a program used to promote exchanges and visits between law librarians in the US and abroad in order to develop both personal and professional relationships, and also to give librarians the chance to work with legal information sources pertaining to other jurisdictions. Library and Information Services (LIS) management here at the University of Wales Swansea (UWS) kindly agreed to explore both the avenues of hosting and that of ‘sending forth’ a law librarian within the program.

This is a revised version of a paper given by John Sibbald at Glasgow University Library on 19 august 2002 at the inaugural meeting of the International Federation of Library Associations' (IFLA) Law Libraries Discussion Group held in conjuction with the 68th IFLA General Conference 18–24 August. The Paper argues the case for Scotland, as a distinct jurisdiction within the UK, having its own seperate, identifiable, and official gateway to legal information.

The purpose of this article, written by John Furlong, is to provide a comparative overview of the Irish legal system with that of the jurisdictions of the United Kingdom and will cover the range of free-to-use resources that are available in respect of Irish case law, legislation and commentaries. The content is aimed at librarians and legal information professionals who are required from time to time, to understand and source Irish law. The article is based on a paper presented at BIALL's 45th Annual Conference, which was held in Harrogate in 2014.

Gerry Power was invited to go to the University of Jos in April 2006 to present workshops to the Law Faculty and other interested legal professionals on using the internet for legal research. He writes about his experiences in dealing with running online workshops whilst coping with electricity shortages and the incredible experience of Nigeria!

This article by Niamh Burns, Senior Manager for Library & Member Support Services at the Bar of Northern Ireland, provides a brief overview of the history of the Bar of Northern Ireland and an explanation of the Bar Library model and the services it provides. She provides an insight into some of the current issues facing the barrister profession in Northern Ireland, then focuses on what the Bar of Northern Ireland's Library & Information Service is doing to support members of the Bar Library in meeting some of their challenges.

Susannah Rayner provides an introduction to the archive collections held at School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Library which relate to legal studies, based on a presentation given at the National Socio-legal Training Day on the subject of legal biography, held at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies 15th May 2013.

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 team responsible for Legal Journals Index explain how journal articles are selected, indexed and loaded to this online legal information service provided by Sweet & Maxwell. They outline the history of LJI and discuss the criteria for determining which journals are included in the service; how the Articles team decides which articles will be indexed; the content of an LJI index entry; how an abstract is written; the use of the taxonomy; the full text journals service on Westlaw; and the work of the Document Delivery team.

Loyita Worley reports on the SLA Europe1 seminar held in March 2011 on the impact of outsourcing in law firms. The panel included the perspectives of the provider companies and experiences of law firm information professionals who have already adopted outsourcing and those who are about to.

In this, the second of two articles, Nadine Fathers looks at what information is available through the various legal online subscription databases in relation to pending appeal cases. Her first article was published in the Spring 2012 issue of LIM.1