Victor Monakhov and Anita Soboleva analyse the current development of legal standards in the area of access to information and protection of personal data in the Russian Federation. At the end of 2005 Russia ratified the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data. At the same time several new laws, intended to harmonize national privacy legislation with this Convention and to define the legal status of different databases, which are being created by the state for the purposes of registration of population and identification of persons, passed the first reading in the State Duma. The article reflects the ongoing debates on the scope of the right to know and the right to keep secret in the Russian context.

Roger Cook of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw has produced a guide to the most important and accessible sources of US law reports which is aimed at those of us who do not necessarily need constant access to such sources.

The Covid-19 pandemic drastically changed the information landscape. For us it exponentially increased our workload and unequivocally demonstrated how much value we could add to the business. The skill set of information professionals is in demand like never before, changing many of our roles for the better. This article, written by Felicity Cross, discusses the effect the pandemic has had on her department and what that means for our profession as a whole.

Graduate traineeships are an excellent way for people to enter into a career in libraries, providing a vast range of relevant experience. In the following article, last year's Graduate Trainee at Lincoln's Inn Library Natalie Kent, describes her experience as a trainee in law, outlining her background, role, training and visits, and reflects on the profession more widely.

Amanda Fancourt is a Lecturer on the Legal Practice Course (LPC) at the Oxford Institute of Legal Practice. This article summarises the results of her research project, “Hitting the Ground Running?”, which looks at whether graduates receive a sufficiently focussed training for future legal careers whilst studying on the Legal Practice Course.

Visual materials are often neglected by legal researchers. However, as Dominic Janes explains, attitudes to appearances played an important role in the way in which many criminal investigations were undertaken, notably in the years prior to the Sexual Offences Act (1967). Analysis of aspects of visual culture played a role in the detection of many forms of illegal behaviour and the resulting materials provide a valuable resource for the contemporary researcher. These issues are explored through a case study that involves reading between a painting by the British expressionist Francis Bacon (1909–92) and a photograph in the National Archives taken during a police raid on a London flat in 1927.

This article, by Heather Dawson, outlines primary and secondary source materials relevant to the academic study of law, gender and sexuality which are available in the LSE library. It includes coverage of the content of the Hall-Carpenter Archive as well as books, journals and archival materials accessible via the Women's Library@LSE. Practical guidance is provided to researchers in using the Library and searching its catalogues effectively.

Tania Schriwer, a lawyer who is retraining as a law librarian, describes a three-week visit from her home library school at the University of Washington in Seattle to the IALS.

The author of this article Margaret Clay looks back on her long tenure as Librarian at the Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court libraries serving barristers, judiciary, and students on the Bar Course. She recalls the selection process she experienced and proceeds to discuss the introduction of automation to the Library, a high priority in the early days. She explains the various relocations of parts of the Library's print collection (made necessary by periodic changes in the priorities of the parent organisation) and traces the development of electronic services: from CD-ROM databases to web-based services and onward to social media. She outlines the initiatives in reader services and other areas entered upon during her tenure and, in conclusion, looks forward to the future of the information service she was instrumental in setting up. Margaret retired in 2020.*

This article, written by Renate Ní Uigín, provides an overview of the Irish law publishing market today. It discusses the nature of Irish law, potential purchasers and the principal publishers.

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, the authors, Catherine Bowl, John Furlong and Caroline Mosley look at the direction the Association's Annual Conference has taken over the past 50 years since the first Conference in Liverpool in 1970. The emphasis is on the mid-1990s to the present day, during which period the authors served as Chairs of BIALL's Conference Committee1.

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.

Beginning in the early 1800s, New York has followed a comprehensive model of law-reporting with official law reports. This article by Charles Dewey Cole, Jr. looks at the influence of James Kent in establishing comprehensive law-reporting in New York, reviews the 1938 legislation that created the law reporting bureau and charged the state reporter with reporting almost all appellate court and selective trial court decisions, describes the state reporter's current publication practices and considers both the advantages of and the challenges presented by comprehensive official law-reporting. The article is based on a June 2019 presentation given at the annual conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians in Bournemouth.

The Bodleian Law Library has only existed as an entity in its own right for less than 50 years. Yet part of the collection dates back to the days before the founding of the Bodleian Library in 1602. The rise and fall in fortunes of the teaching of law at Oxford is closely tied to the establishment of the law library. A lesser known aspect of the history includes the ties between Oxford and the United States, especially its oldest law school, William and Mary Law School. In this paper, Ruth Bird offers a brief history of the University of Oxford and then looks at the history of law teaching, before moving on to the evolution of the Law Library itself, and some links with our cousins across the pond.

Nick Davies delivered two lively sessions at the BIALL Conference 2011 concerning, “How to make your training engaging? Presenting so People Learn”. This article summaries those practical notions relating to effective delivery of training sessions and provides tips relating to the art of successful presenting.

Paper presented to the 35th BIALL Annual Study Conference in Edinburgh, June 2004 by Sharon Markless.

Alison Clayton and Cath Hancock have supplied us with two articles addressing aspects of the recruitment and selection process. This article from Alison Clayton, Training and Development Officer at Cameron McKenna, deals with the skills you need to be an effective interviewer.