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.

Uttering the phrase knowledge management (KM) evokes all sorts of facial expressions in different audiences ranging from bewilderment, confusion and non-chalance through to blatant boredom. As an independent consultant working in this area, I am particularly attuned to these facial expressions when I address I this subject. I prefer my clients to be in the ‘bewildered’ or ‘confused’ state as this indicates they think that KM could be important to them but they are not sure how it could impact their businesses. Many also have an underlying enthusiasm for the topic as there is still a lot of buzz and talk about the ‘knowledge economy’. Those in the ‘non-chalant’ and ‘bored’ categories are much harder to turn around as they have probably ‘already tried knowledge management and it didn’t work. Their initial enthusiasm has turned to cynicism, they do not like being told they got it wrong but they are looking for ways to recoup their investment of both time and money.

In early 2002, Legal Week, in conjunction with PA Consulting Group, published a survey of how the major law firms in the UK are using IT as a management and competitive weapon. The survey, targeted at both managing partners and IT directors of the top 100 law firms in the UK, was carried out during the latter part of 2001. An article highlighting the main results of the survey was published in Legal IT (www.legalit.net) and reported that law firms currently spend between 2% and 10% of their turnover on IT each year, the average being 5.5%. Client portal and knowledge management (KM) are the two areas of greatest activity in the near future (cited by 27% and 30% of the survey sample respectively).

Taxonomies are becoming trendy! What do you, as a legal information professional, need to know about them? Do you already know a good deal because they appeared under the guise of classification schemes when you were studying librarianship or information science? In this article an attempt will be made to explain in comprehensible terms the place of taxonomies in current thinking about information retrieval, and in particular their relevance to your work as a legal information manager.

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.

Many organisations, be they publishers or other information rich enterprises, are in possession of large volumes of data to which they are looking to add value in various ways. The motivation behind this might be purely commercial (a desire to publish revenue-generating material, for example) or, if the data is not intended for external consumption, an attempt to facilitate and improve the flow ofinformation within an organisation.

There are currently 18,456 attorneys and Candidate attorneys registered with the Law Society of South Afric and 5,941 registered law firms (CLE 2002). Data is not yet available regarding the size distribution of these law firms but a glance at any of the national legal directories will reveal that the majority of attorneys operate as solo practitioners or in association with a few colleagues. A large city practice will generally be well supplied with information resources and with assistance from a librarian or information professional. In a small practice, the information resources that the attorney has at his or her disposal may be limited to a few textbooks, supplemented in some cases with access to electronic databases and Internet resources. Small practices seldom employ information professionals, although they may make use of the services of information agencies and independent contractors to assist with research and/or information management.

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!

The notion that we are living through times of great change in the communication of information and the transmission of texts is a truism which will bring a weary look to most professionals with any kind of involvement in the area. The digital age, the information age, the electronic age — we've all heard these terms so many times and have sat through innumerable discussions, and seen even more documents, trying to sort out what it all means. There are almost as many views on the likely pace of change and the shape of the landscape 10 or 20 years from now as there are librarians to hold forth on the subject. Perhaps this helps to explain why the library community as a whole seems to be in such a rudderless state regarding the creation of digital content; no shortage of action, but no overall sense of direction. I am talking here about digitisation of our documentary heritage, that vast mass of books, archives and other media which fill our library shelves today.

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.

Legal IT 2002, sponsored by Legal Week, took place on 6th and 7th February. A number of interesting keynote events were organised. Andrew Terrett spoke on the application of content management strategies to secure effective and efficient control over multi-system distributed content and Gerald Newman, the creator of the Law Society's Solicitors' Online site, reviewed online Web site marketing. Reviewing the event in Legal IT Kieren Flatt commented on the ‘rather uncertain future of dedicated IT trade shows for law firms’ but also noted that ‘the pace of innovation in the legal sector is, if anything, still accelerating’.

Murdoch's Irish Legal Companion is a CD-ROM and Web-based product from Topaz Publications and Lendac Data Systems. It incorporates a new edition of A Dictionary of Irish Law as well as the full text of cited Acts and statutory instruments from 1922 to 2000. I reviewed the Dictionary on CD-ROM.

The coverage of the Dictionary is fairly extensive, providing definitions of approximately 6,500 thousand legal definitions with cross references and hyperlinks to related terms, legislation and relevant Web sites.