This article by David Ogden addresses the census collection of Great Britain. The 100 year rule regarding the public release of information is examined and explained, as is the Census Act 1920, as amended in 2000. It also considers the impact of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in respect of the release of records by repositories. The 30 year standard closure on official papers is considered.

David Percik, Chair of the BIALL Legal Information Group traces the history of this award, which was presented for the first time to Wildy's at the BIALL Conference in June 2010.

Rosemary Shakespeare attended the 2nd Joint ALLA/NZLLA Conference. Her interest was primarily in those sessions with a worldwide focus, rather than specifically the Australasia region and this article is about digitisation projects, with particular emphasis on the Law Library Microform Consortium's work.

Vicky Ling outlines the Government's proposals to reform the legal aid scheme for family law. They would remove legal aid funding from many potential clients and threaten access to justice.

Sara Meyer, the newly appointed Knowledge Manager at the Legal Ombudsman in Birmingham, describes how they are beginning to set up KM systems to deal with a completely new jurisdiction relating to the hearing of complaints against solicitors. This follows the introduction of reforms contained in the Legal Services Act 2007, which mean that all complaints are now heard by this one organisation.

John Furlong of Matheson, Ormsby Prentice LLP briefly describes the services provided by the Companies Registration Office.

Anne Coles describes the process of becoming a chartered member of CILIP and considers whether it is relevant to the corporate information sector. She concludes that the skills it encompasses are all vital.

This paper, presented at the BIALL Conference in June 2010 by Anneli Sarkanen, describes the process Field Fisher Waterhouse went through in utilising wikis in the firm for knowledge management and knowledge sharing. It describes the development of the project, the tactics used to encourage adoption, problems encountered and the project's planned future development.

In the current climate of rapid technological change, upheavals in the legal profession and global recession, Nick Holmes asks “What does the future hold for law publishing?”

Chris Holland analyses the provisions of the new Digital Economy Act 2010 and considers its potential effect on the work of information professionals.

Employment is one of the five main departments at City law firm Fox Williams LLP. In the following article, Julie Keys considers the resources needed to support an employment practice and how these relate to the research requirements of employment lawyers.

The British Medical Association Library (BMA) has been through some significant changes over the past two years. As part of an organisation-wide refurbishment, Jacky Berry, now its permanent Librarian, has project managed one of these changes, the relocation of the BMA library within the existing building. Her article covers many aspects of a library move, including the design phase and working with architects and internal estates teams; the budgeting phase including negotiating finance; planning for the move and motivating staff through the change period.

The Committee on Relations with Information Vendors (CRIV) is one of thirty-seven committees organized under the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL). The purpose of CRIV is to facilitate communications between information vendors and the members of the Association by monitoring complaints and providing constructive suggestions to vendors of legal information. The Committee also serves to educate AALL member librarians on helpful ways to communicate with information vendors. This article by Rob Myers provides a brief history of CRIV, outlines the Committee's organisation and structure, discusses its activities in pursuit of its charge, and outlines its goals for the immediate future.

In this article Pattie Punch reflects on IALL's 34th Annual Course on International Law and Legal Information which was held at Statsbibliothek, Berlin from 20th to 24th September, 2015. The course was entitled ‘Within and in Between: German Legal Tradition in Times of Internationalization and Beyond’ and the work and content of the presentations made her consider what she values about the education of law librarians in the 21st Century. The course raised many questions in relation to a resilient education for law librarians. Since this course, the Brexit referendum in the UK has taken place and the author offers her thoughts about this change of direction and what it might mean for the profession.

Is Google a substitute for using known, authoritative websites for cases, legislation and other official information? Ian Hunter writes about the test searches that he carried out on Google and discusses the results he noted. In this exercise, consideration is given to whether the websites retrieved are authoritative and also attention is paid to Google's ranking of results.

Today, the level of access to legal information in Canada equals or surpasses that of any country. Not only do several commercial publishers compete to sell their publications but, in recent years, legislatures, many courts and tribunals have built significant repositories on the web. However, the most spectacular advance has come through the creation of CanLII. In this paper, the Daniel Poulin looks at why and how the Free Access to Law (FAL) approach came about in Canada. He sketches the principles supporting free access, but he tries also to make the business case for establishing it.

In the article, Jennefer Aston reflects on the involvement in BIALL of law librarians from Ireland. She writes about the development of the BIALL Irish Group, some of the challenges that Irish law librarians have faced, notes how the legal sector in Ireland grew in the 1980s and 1990s and describes the collaboration and the activities of law librarians in Ireland. She also invites former Chair of the Association, John Furlong, and current President, Renate ní Uigín, to give some thoughts too.

In this article Sue Shreeve and Julie Hamley give an overview of how the subject support librarian role at UWE Bristol has evolved over the last five years, broadening from subject information specialist to encompass academic skills support and English language/communication skills support. They outline how they have implemented this change in role profile by evolving the skills set of the subject librarians and share some of the student online learning materials that have been created during this evolution in role.

In this short article, David Ibbetson, the Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge, writes about the value of the law librarian in the academic context. His wide-ranging interests cover English and European legal history and, in particular, the historical relationship between English Common Law and the legal systems and legal thought of the rest of Europe. His experiences of using law libraries and receiving assistance from academic-based law librarians has led him to acknowledge the true value of the profession.