I never wanted to get involved. I had a feeling it would take longer and be much more work than originally anticipated. I knew it would require an attention to detail which I would have trouble acquiring. I guessed it would take stamina, tact and perseverance. I worried it would put a strain on all sorts of relationships. How right I was!

It all started soon after I joined CMS ameron McKenna in April 1999. As a new PSL I was excited about giving up the relentless search for chargeable work required of all practising solicitors and I savoured the prospect of not having to complete a time sheet. Life was to become academically stimulating again—and above all stress free!

David Wills describes his experiences at the AALL summit with particular emphasis on the sessions on legal education, digital ephemera preservation, disaster planning and the rights of indigenous people.

In the essential work, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville (ISBN 1-56592-282-4), the authors state that the primary job of the information architect is to:

clarify the mission and vision for the site, balancing the needs of its sponsoring organisation and the needs of its audiences

determine what content and functionality the site will contain

specify how users will find information in the site by defining its organisation, navigation, labelling, and searching systems

map out how the site will accommodate change and growth over time.

These points rather succinctly describe what an information architect sets out to accomplish for any given site and/or situation. But given these points what should someone ‘do’ to implement improved information architecture (IA) for a site? Where do you start?

Jas Breslin gives a brief overview of how email discussion forums can be used by information professionals and information providers to enrich and enhance relationships.

Claire Fox presents a case study to show how information services at a London law firm were improved by developing good working relationships between the library and the rest of the firm.

This article by Jennifer Findlay describes the history and the current library service and research support provided for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS). The library team manage resources across all the SCTS sites in Scotland. This account looks at the history of the SCTS, the current library service and the future.

This article by Clare Brown is based on a presentation given at the BIALL Online Annual Conference in June 2021. It takes the form of a case study that illustrates how library and information professionals can control the flow of information so as to avoid users being overwhelmed by news.

This article by Emily Allbon introduces readers to the discipline of legal design, offering an insight into its application, its methodology, and the contexts in which it appears. There is coverage of why legal design is so pivotal for ensuring access to the law and an exploration of where it is being used: in legal practice, in academia, in public legal education and in the courts. There is also a close look at one element; that of visual contracts, and some consideration of where the legal information profession might position itself.

Victoria Jannetta explores the reasons why library and information centres need to measure performance; what activities you can measure; how to report performance to management, including looking at the Balanced Scorecard. She discusses a number of measurement tools.

This site contains information on copyright, designs, patents and trademarks. The legal decisions page includes selected decisions issued by the Patent Office since the beginning of 1998 and links through to the Patents Court website, European Patent Office website and Copyright Tribunal. News and press releases on aspects of intellectual property and the Trade Mark, Patent and Design Journal notices can also be viewed here with all pages including a note of when they were last updated. A page with information on patent and trademark searches and a search facility for the whole site is available. A list of forms can be accessed and viewed along with guidance notes and fees information. Progress on implementation of the EU Copyright Directive is brief but helpful. The glossary of terms covers very few terms and some pages would benefit from hyperlinks being added such as the information about international treaties. URL: http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/index.htm

‘Transactional learning’ at its simplest means learning from doing transactions. When professionals learn they often do so, as Donald Schön reminds us, by learning from within transactions – ‘knowing-in-action’. By this Schön means that professionals solve problems by constructing for themselves a repertoire of precedents, images and remembered actions. Problems are not solved by using rules alone, but are framed or constructed according to the repertoire. Professionals try out solutions for fit, re-frame, feed back to themselves, try out other solutions. The result is what Schön calls ‘;reflection-in-action’. According to him, this is what produces the doctor's “feel’ for a specific diagnosis, or a lawyer's ‘feel’ for a case, (Schon 1983).

Elizabeth Mary Moys, known to all her colleagues as Betty, was born on 26 June 1928 at Wickford, Essex. She was brought up in Kent where she spent most of her life when in the UK. She attended Chislehurst County Grammar School then went on to Queen Mary College, London, to read English and took a BA (Hons) degree in 1949. Her first job was in Crayford Branch of Kent County Library Service from 1949–50. After library school in 1950–51 (Northwestern Polytechnic School of Librarianship, where she was one of the leading spirits in starting a School of Librarian-ship Students' Association), Betty became reference librarian at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1951.

Jackie Fishleigh summarises some tried and tested methods that can turn an intranet into an invaluable business tool. This article provides a number of top tips for engaging users and maintaining their interest and attention for the benefit of their working community. The article, which draws heavily on recently published material by Martin White and Interact Intranet, aims to be informative and entertaining!

Josephine Bailey, the inaugural recipient of BIALL's Professional Studies Bursary, provides a student's perspective on current LIS qualifications, what they can offer to individuals hoping to enter the profession and the challenges facing new professionals today. Her observations and comments are based on her experiences of the MA course in Librarianship and Information Services Management which is offered by the University of Sheffield and is currently ranked as the top university for Librarianship and Information Management.

On joining Browne Jacobson just over six years ago I inherited a paper based catalogue and notebook of items taken from the library which were then crossed out on return. Quickly finding this was impractical and cumbersome to use, to the point where it very often was not used, one of the main priorities was to automate the catalogue and circulation system as quickly as possible. Calm 2000 was purchased as a stand-alone system in the library with capacity for up to 10,000 records and worked well initially but as fee earners gained increasing access to a wide variety of resources and other local library catalogues from their own PCs demand grew for access to in-house library holdings and the cataloguing of websites, online journals and internally generated documents. Difficulties arose in using a stand-alone system when I ceased to be a solo, particularly for receipt of journals and loose leafs. The firm had also expanded significantly in size and opened an additional office. Libraries in the London and Birmingham offices being smaller than the main library at the Nottingham office created demand for holdings information to facilitate loans between offices.

This article is based on the parallel session given by Jackie Fishleigh at the BIALL Conference in 2011 which looked at how Legal Information Professionals can get involved and contribute their skills to collaborative projects using SharePoint.

This article takes the form of a short interview with George Woodman, Librarian at the Northern Ireland Assembly Library. The questions were posed by the LIM Editor. George was recently given Life Membership of BIALL and received the Wildy BIALL Law Librarian of the Year 2011 Award at the 2011 BIALL Annual Dinner in Newcastle. More significantly, George was awarded an MBE in HM The Queen's Birthday Honours 2010 in recognition of his services to the profession.

This report by Peter Clinch describes the procedures followed and the results obtained through updating the FLAG (Foreign Law Guide) database1, which took place during the Spring and Autumn 2010.

Dunstan Speight, of Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP, gives his recommendations for some essential reference desk titles.

I saw the ad for ‘Head Librarian’ at Central European University in Prague in July 1993 after I had stopped for coffee in a grotty service area on the M5, en route from the impossible job in Glasgow to the exciting job in Somerset (holding both of those down simultaneously was an interesting geographical challenge in itself…). Of course, I knew I had no chance at all, but applied anyway, and by some minor miracle they offered me the post.