This paper is based on the presentation given by Heather Semple of the Northern Ireland Law Society to the 39th Annual BIALL Conference held in Dublin in June 2008 and covers the historical and constitutional background to the country. The paper then considers sources of legislation and case law and provides helpful tips on how to undertake research within the complicated and difficult system of legislative publishing.

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.

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.

At the BIALL Conference in June 2010 John Duffy presented a paper recounting his experiences of installing a bespoke desktop library interface for all the barristers, with customisation available and utilising Web 2.0 tools.

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”.

Keri Gray gave a practical presentation at the June 2010 BIALL Conference covering practical tips and techniques to make the most of yourself before and during an interview.

Within UK law firms, marketing or business development departments have traditionally been responsible for the provision of business information. Sue Lamond, from Addleshaw Goddard, explains how her firm differs in that the Information Services department is responsible for this provision. The department compiles company and sector profiles and analyses, and is directly involved in the pitch process for new work from clients, supporting client partners' information and development needs.

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.

This article by Stuart Stone, Librarian at the Radzinowicz Library at the Institute of Criminology at Cambridge, examines a selection of online information resources used by criminologists and compares their particular features and deficiencies. The author's involvement in training early career researchers, both in formal training sessions and one-to-one sessions, over a long period, allows for user responses and experiences of the resources to inform this examination.

Barristers need information. They need it to defend their clients by presenting their case in court. Some of the information they need is to be found in a book; some is to be found on a database. Choices made by the barristers and the rationale for these choices form the basis for what is to follow, as Ruth Fay explains. In this piece of research, a lack of a control group meant that no firm conclusions could be drawn. However, some interesting findings emerged in terms of how the library was used. A number of recommendations were proposed. For the most part, they centred on practical and immediate rethinks with encouragement towards the ushering in of a new culture.

Beverley Woolfson analyses the concept of information overload: how it has evolved, and its relevance to the information professional in the commercial law firm. Using data gathered during her MSc dissertation research and combining it with current theories on the topic, the writer concludes that while the information intermediary is often vulnerable to the dangers of overload, a number of strategies can be implemented to ensure that its effects are minimised.

With the adoption of the new 17 SMART Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), access to government information becomes essential for these goals to be realised. This view was corroborated by IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) at its 2015 Cape Town Declaration. In Nigeria, the drastic reduction in the revenue accruable to the government following the sharp decline in the price of crude oil and the subsequent impact on the nation's economy have made it imperative for citizens of the country to insist on transparency and accountability regarding the activities of the government. Otherwise, the SDGs could end up like the much-talked-about MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) whose records were unimpressive despite the oil boom of that era. Public libraries could serve as useful channels for providing government information to citizens. However, their managers lack the necessary technical skills. This article considers how public libraries in Nigeria could provide access to government information for its users. This study is based on existing literature, international binding documents and observations, as well as drawing on the wealth of experience of the researchers themselves and their interactions with public librarians. It is recommended that the scope of the curricula of library schools in Nigeria be broadened to include the mandatory teaching of management of government information to budding librarians. Also, there should be collaboration between public librarians and law librarians. Such collaboration would help provide more access to government information for the citizens of Nigeria. Law librarians could also benefit from the collaboration and devise better skills to help improve their services to users.

The Kent Law School at the University of Kent celebrated its 40th Anniversary in 2008 and Diane Raper, the current law librarian, reviews the changes that have taken place over the years in relation to user comment and feedback, and external drivers which have ensured the provision of a first-class library and information service for staff and students. She also considers the major changes in the modus operandi of the service over the last 40 years.

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.

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.

Ruth Bird, Bodleian Law Librarian, explains how the original home-grown classification scheme became unfit for purpose, due to the enormous expansion of international legal materials held, and the reasons for implementing the Moys scheme. She outlines the progress and the problems encountered to date in this huge project.

Change, it is said, is the only constant. Whilst it cannot be avoided, the worlds of legal education and legal services have arguably enjoyed an extended period where the impact of change has been comparatively minimal. Today, these worlds face significant changes due to a combination of market and regulatory forces. True, such changes are likely to be accompanied by challenges but with these challenges come opportunities. There is no reason why Law Schools and Law students cannot help to shape these changes and benefit from them. Peter Smith, Richard Whittle and Peter Griffith discuss LawSync™, a project that seeks to enable such influence and attract such benefits at Sheffield Hallam University. See http://www.lawsync.com and http://twitter.com/lawsync for more details.

This article, written by John Bahrij and Lily Ko, focuses on resources in print and electronic form that are available in English for Chinese legal research in the Greater China region. The article covers resources for the People's Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) and Taiwan. An overview of each jurisdictions legal system is also provided so that the resources can be discussed in the context of the prevailing system of law.

In this philosophical article John Eaton from the University of Manitoba recounts the current legal education system in Canada and reflects on the issues involved in teaching legal research skills, including problems with where to base the training within the curriculum, and difficulties encountered in the migration from hard copy research, to current students' predilections for using electronic sources. Whilst based on the Canadian process his article has a wider application in relation to the “Google-generation” of students.

Dawn Jones discusses the findings from an in-house project looking at how agile and flexible working can be successfully adopted by legal and business professionals. It is based on information gained from speaking to those with agile and flexible working already entrenched in their businesses, external consultants who advise on this change of working habits and internal teams and individuals who are already exercising agile and flexible working (albeit in a non-formal way). It is a high level guide to start thought processes around the differences between agile and flexible working, the people, the offices and the finances.