Melinda Renner, from the University of New Brunswick, writes about her experiences as a New England Law Library Consortium International Fellow who was seconded to the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London. She describes the visits she made and her impressions of how academic librarianship in Britain and Canda appear to share many of the same issues and problems.

This paper was presented by Penny Bailey at the 38th BIALL Annual Study Conference held in Sheffield in June 2007 and covers the challenges involved in introducing a knowledge management strategy to a law firm. It suggests methods to be adopted in trying to implement such a service including identification with the firm's business objectives; persuasive communication; identification of the benefits accruing and strategies for collecting knowledge.

This article by Paul Billingham of Concept Searching and Phil Ayton of UC Logic covers the history of computerised searching aids in the context of knowledge management projects and describes conceptSearching, which is a scientific approach to trying to solve natural language searching problems using a number of techniques, not just an algorithm. They also consider federated searching and describe the Sysero information portal and a taxonomy manager application.

Roderick Munday, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge and Editor-in-chief of the Justice of the Peace Reports, shares his invaluable perception and extensive research on the difficulties which arise from the excess of access to judgments.

Carl Clayton, Director, SINTO - the information partnership, writes that there is no shortage of legal information, yet for some people it can still be difficult to get access to the legal information they may need as citizens. Libraries in the Sheffield area have a strong history of co-operation but this cannot remove all the barriers.

Peter Clinch, retired Senior Subject Librarian for Law, Cardiff University and Steven Whittle, Information Systems Manager at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies describe the developments relating to the FLARE Index to Treaties.

This article by Craig Gerrard, Librarian, Weightmans LLP reports on plans being drawn up by the Finnish library authorities to implement a huge digital library.

The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals is an essential tool for locating credible secondary sources on foreign, comparative, and international law topics in multiple languages. This article, by Kristen Rowlett, gives a brief overview of the history of the Index. Then, the article explores the Index's search functionally and the importance of the humans behind the Index. Finally, the article previews future enhancements for the Index.

In this article Philip Chung, Andrew Mowbray, and Graham Greenleaf, the Co-Directors of the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), explain the need for an open source search engine which can search simultaneously over legal materials in European languages and also in Asian languages, particularly those that require a ‘double byte’ representation, and the difficulties this task presents. A solution is proposed; the ‘u16a’ modifications to AustLII's open source search engine (Sino) which is used by many legal information institutes. Two implementations of the Sino u16A approach, on the Hong Kong Legal Information Institute (HKLII), for English and Chinese, and on the Asian Legal Information Institute (AsianLII), for multiple Asian languages, are described. The implementations have been successful, though many challenges (discussed briefly) remain before this approach will provide a full multi-lingual search facility.

Sara Berry, Head of Information Sourcing at Clifford Chance, recounts her experiences of moving her library from the City of London to Canary Wharf – the article contains a useful checklist of items to consider.

This article is designed for law librarians based outside the United States. The paper, written by Marcia Zubrow, provides basic information about the United States legal system and its sources. This background foundation to the article is important in understanding how to effectively use the two major U.S. databases, Lexis and Westlaw. The author describes the contents of the two databases within the context of the background information. Search techniques, including advance searching strategies, are described.

Jacki Sleator outlines the origins of the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) and how the organisation made its transition from a small organisation to one of the biggest legal departments in N Ireland.

This article, written by Ivo Vogel and Elisabeth Schrecklinger, deals with the efforts of German libraries to digitise historical legal sources and make them publicly available. Although the main focus is on two selected libraries, a general overview is included. Commercial products are not considered since their contents are likely to become increasingly less relevant due to German law libraries' own initiatives. More attention is paid to problems that have been identified during the implementation of digitisation projects such as the recording of full texts is highlighted. The retrieval of digitised legal materials and, eventually, the digitisation of historical legal gazettes or parliamentary literature is also discussed. This contribution focuses exclusively on the retrospective digitisation of historical legal materials.

Elisabeth Tooms has recently taken early retirement from Allen & Overy, one of our largest law firms, after many years of service there and she has been persuaded to look back and consider the most significant changes which have taken place in law firm information work over the last twenty years.

Lesley Dingle, founder of the Eminent Scholars Archive, provides a further contribution based on interviews with Emeritus Professor John Anthony “Tony” Jolowicz, one of the great legal scholars at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College since 1952.

The UK's legal deposit libraries play a crucial role in ensuring the country's intellectual and literary output is systematically captured for the use and enjoyment of readers, listeners, and researchers, now and in the future. This article, by Kieran Lee Marshall and Kate Faulkner, summarily examines the legislation that underpins that scheme – the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 and Legal Deposit Libraries (Non-Print Works) Regulations 2013. Over three parts, it explores the historical development of legal deposit in the UK; its operation in the context of the modern deposit library – using a university library as its primary paradigm; and considers ways in which the current law and policy may be developed to better support deposit libraries, the information professionals that run them, and the library and archive users who greatly depend upon barrier-free access to deposited resources. It concludes by outlining three areas on which prospective reform may focus.

The article below, which is written by Gloria Orrego Hoyos, presents an overview of the Inter-American Human Rights System, its main instruments, its organs for the protection and promotion of human rights in the Americas and the available tools for the academic research and the activism in the vindication for human rights in the region. This information is presented from the contextualization of the system within a history of violation of human rights in the region, and the role of both the Inter-American Convention and the Inter-American Court in the transformation of the social, political and institutional realities of the people of the continent.

This paper, by Hector MacQueen, assesses the current state of Scots law and the Scottish legal system, arguing that as a small legal system which cannot be self-contained it is inevitably in a state of crisis, from which, however, it will not be rescued by Scotland becoming independent.* Whatever happens after the referendum concerning Scottish Independence on 18 September 2014, the law is in need of active legislative reform, possibly codification, while the courts must become more positive in the attraction of business rather than, as it sometimes seems, seeking to push it away. Mere defence of the status quo will end in disablement and defeat.

If you are involved in handling information, computerised or not, which refers to identifiable living individuals, the Act probably applies to YOU.

The following is a summary (in handy menu form, and with no literary pretensions whatsoever) of the principles of the Act.The standard encyclopaedia on the subject runs to three volumes: a short article can only give an overview, and must not be taken as definitive. If you think the Act may apply, take specialist advice!

Headquartered in Washington, DC, the Special Libraries Association is the international association representing the interests of thousands of information professionals in 60 countries. The Association offers a variety of programs and services designed to help its members serve their customers more effectively and succeed in an increasingly challenging environment of information management and technology.