This Current Awareness column, and previous Current Awareness columns, are now fully searchable in the new caLIM database (Current Awareness for Legal Information Managers). The caLIM database is available on the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies website at: http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/caware/caware.htm

This well-attended full-day seminar on 22 April 2002 was held at the British Library Conference Centre, a comfortable venue with space for a small exhibition by the main legal information providers separate from the auditorium. It was organised jointly by BIALL and SCOOP (Standing Committee on Official Publications). Speakers included Sarah Carter (University of Kent), Alan Pawsey of HMSO, Tony Hopkins from the Statutory Publications Office and Joe Ury, Executive Director of BAILII. The afternoon focused on the commercial providers of legal information, providing a forum for speakers from Context, Westlaw UK, LEXIS and Lawtel.

This was the first time that I had attended EBIC, so I didn't quite know what to expect. When I received the preliminary information on the conference I put it on one side wondering whether it warranted the expenditure required, but when I had a chance to look at it properly I really liked what I saw and realised that it would be very pertinent to my job as it is now. The conference appeared to be a nice balance between knowledge and information strategies, technology and information delivery and leadership and management – all areas in which I am very interested. Also, the structure appealed to me – a combination of panel, plenary and breakout sessions.

Westlaw UK announced content enhancements at the end of October. European content is now updated each afternoon meaning that the Official Journal of the European Communities is now available within 24 hours of publication. Articles from the Scots Law Times from 1997 and case summaries from 2000 are now accessible on Westlaw UK, Westlaw UK Scots Law and Westlaw UK Scots Crime. The Westlaw UK Crime Service now includes Criminal Appeal Reports back to 1967 and The Criminal Appeal Reports (Sentencing) back to 1979. This additional content has been added directly to all Westlaw UK and Westlaw UK Crime practice area services. Finally, ICLR cases are now available on Westlaw UK Civil Procedure adding 7,000 full text law reports, and providing a case archive to complement the Civil Procedure Reports.

The basic resource is the Lord Chancellor's Department with the full text of the CPR, practice directions, schedules and pre-action protocols available in Word, pdf and html formats. The major advantage of this resource is its currency, with updated versions appearing here first. The opening page provides clear information on the latest changes and when they come into force. Consultation papers on civil matters are also provided in full.

This paper provides a brief introduction to caLIM, the Current Awareness for Legal Information Managers (http://193.62.18.223/dbtw-wpd/textbase/cadquery.htm) web database developed at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London and made freely available on the IALS Web site.

Earlier in the year Context launched Link Studio, an e-publishing program that automates the creation of hypertext links within documents. It eliminates the need for manual editing. The program can identify bibliographic citations, named entities (e.g. companies, organisations) and pre-defined words and phrases, interprets the varying ways in which such data can be presented and uses the resulting information to locate the cited document. It then automatically converts the reference into a link to it. This can lead to much faster link creation within documents. It may be useful for users who have neither the time nor the inclination to increase the utility of documents by engaging in laborious manual editing and creation of links. Where information sharing, resource management and easy navigation between sources (using intranets, for example) is crucial such programs may be valuable. The technology is similar to Context's existing i-Link and it now works with Word 97 (and upwards) documents. See www.syntalex.com/solutions/acl_whatlink.html.