It was only three years ago that I was told that publishing valuable digital content on the Internet would not take off for 10 years. Today it is happening all around us with MP3 music files being swapped by our children and market research reports openly passed between business colleagues. The problem is that the intellectual property owners lose control of distribution through publishing content on the Internet – in its raw essence, an unregulated global arena – and then, more often than not, do not get paid for use of a large percentage of their content, This is perhaps the greatest reason why publishers have been unwilling to place valuable content online. Historically low-value content has taken up the vast majority of what we have been able to access online with companies hoping to recoup costs through advertising revenue. The reason is simple; conventional Internet technologies do not have any facilities for enforcing copyright, but the problem is that advertising revenues are dwindling so publishers need to find other ways of generating revenue. We can now look back with a sense of irony at straplines from major technology companies saying “Information at your finger tips”, “Information where and how you need it” as this is exactly what they are now trying to prevent so that they can keep an element of control.

In the identification, evaluation and acquisition of suitable computer related software products and skills, as well as Internet products and skills, organisations have continuously sought to streamline their business processes. Historically the route taken has been dictated by the outcome of previous decisions — organisations have been governed by their chosen hardware and software environments or had to justify significant re-investment in a change of direction. This could, however, all be about to change radically in the immediate future.

Since May 1997, the constitutional structure of the United Kingdom has been transformed. A developed Parliment in Scotland and a devolved Assembly in Wales have been established. After a false start in December 1999 which lasted only 11 weeks before suspension in February 2000, the Northern Ireland Assembly was reconvened in May 2000. In England, Regional Development Agencies and Regional Chambers are up and running in each of the English regions and the Government is strengthening the Government Offices of the Regions. Campaigns for directly elected regional assemblies are becoming increasingly active in some of the english regions. In May 2000 Ken Livingstone was elected London's first directly elected Mayor. In elections of the Greater London Assembly the Labour amd Conservative parties won 9 candidates each, the Liberal Democrats 4 and the Green 3. Devolution has also brought about changes in the centre, with a reduction in the number of Scottish and the Welsh ministers and changes in Parlimentary procedures.

This article aims to give a broad outline of what the JISC Legal Information Service is and why it was set up. In particular it deals with the challenges of the Internet and the new legislation that attempts to regulate it or stimulate its use. The Internet is fast becoming embedded in the FE/HE sector, in teaching and learning, research and administration–ignore it at your peril some might say. Yet there are risks to this, in some cases, enthusiastic rush to embrace all things that utilise the WWW. The relative ease of access, extraction and dissemination on ‘the net’ has tempted some to overlook the legalities. This article summarises briefly the main areas of law under consideration and the potential costs of infringement. It explains that FE/HE is subject to this legislation sometimes in specific ways. It concludes by stressing the need for feedback from the sector including BIALL members in order that the service can improve.

The Scotland Act 1998 which established the Scottish Parliament confers on that Parliament the power to make laws which are known as Acts of the Scottish Parliament. However, the legislative competence of the Parliament is restricted. The main restriction relates to reserved matters, that is those matters which the UK Parliament has not devolved to the Scottish Parliament. These are listed in sch 5 to the Act and cover such matters as defence, taxation, social security and macro-economics. Other significant restrictions on the Parliament's legislative competence are that an Act of the Scottish Parliament cannot make any provision which is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) or with European Community law, nor can an Act of the Scottish Parliament modify certain “protected enactments” - including most provisions of the Scotland Act 1998 itself and the Human Rights Act I 998. Finally, an Act of the Scottish Parliament cannot have effect outside Scotland, nor can it remove the Lord Advocate from his position as head of the systems of criminal prosecutions and investigation of deaths in Scotland. An Act of the Scottish Parliament is not law so far as any provision of it is outside the Parliament's legislative competence

Looking back to 1999, there were a number of search engines which performed equally well. I recommended defining the search strategy very carefully, using Boolean logic and field search techniques, and always running the search in more than one search engine. Numerous articles and Web columns comparing the performance of different search engines came to different conclusions on the ‘best’ search engines. Over the last year, however, all the speakers at conferences and seminars I have attended have recommended Google as their preferred tool for locating all kinds of information on the Web. I confess that I have now abandoned most of my carefully worked out search strategies and comparison tests, and use Google for most of my own Web searches.

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!

In the essential work, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville (ISBN 1-56592-282-4), the authors state that the primary job of the information architect is to:

clarify the mission and vision for the site, balancing the needs of its sponsoring organisation and the needs of its audiences

determine what content and functionality the site will contain

specify how users will find information in the site by defining its organisation, navigation, labelling, and searching systems

map out how the site will accommodate change and growth over time.

These points rather succinctly describe what an information architect sets out to accomplish for any given site and/or situation. But given these points what should someone ‘do’ to implement improved information architecture (IA) for a site? Where do you start?

Most of these sites contain very good sets of links, both to other Government sites and to other sources of legal information. It is by no means comprehensive, as a comprehensive list would require far more space than is available here, and would also become outdated far more quickly than this selective list. The important thing to remember is that the information is, usually, out there somewhere.

‘You'll be bored’ they told me, when I left my post in a busy law firm library and took up the role of Information Manager at the Bristol Law Society, surrounded by leather-bound books and cherry-wood shelves. I think it was a problem of perception: what would I do with my time without having partners demanding their research by yesterday, if not sooner? Would people really want me to provide very old cases all day long? Just what exactly was the local law society library for?

These are divided into three categories: Excepted Reserved and Transferred Matters. Excepted Matters are those which are always the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government. They include such matters as external defence, foreign policy and coinage and are listed in full in Sch 2 to the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Reserved Matters are those which, while remaining the responsibility of Westminster, could be devolved in the future. They include taxation and policing and Sch 3 to the 1998 Act lists them in full. Transferred Matters are all other functions of Government which are devolved to an Assembly.

The following report outlines the activities and funding of academic law libraries in the UK and Ireland in the academic year I 99912000.The figures have been taken from the results of a postal questionnaire undertaken by Information Services staff at Cardiff University on behalf of the Society of Public Teachers of Law (SPTL).

A select group of delegates gathered in the sauna-like atmosphere of the silver Springs cellar to learn how, and indeed why, we should put ourselves forward for Library Association chartership.

Following its General Election victory in 1997, the new Labour Government set out its plans for devolution in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The proposals for a National Assembly for Wales were outlined in A Voice for Wales, published as a White Paper in July 1997. A referendum on the proposals was held on 18 September and, as many people know, the result was very close, with the outcome not known until the very last result was declared. In the end, however, the people of Wales said “Yes” to the Assembly by a margin of just 0.6% – 50.3% voting in favour of the Assembly, with 49.7% rejecting the proposals.

I was appointed as a dedicated subject librarian for Law at Manchester Metropolitan University in November 1996. The University Library manages the post while the Law Department finances it, making it unique within the current staffing structure. The University supports the full range of academic and practitioner law courses over a variety of attendance modes. This accounts for a FTE of 1037 students.

First, here is a quick recap for those not familiar with the Library and the Document Supply Service. The Institute Library is a postgraduate academic research library, known for its collections of foreign and international law, particularly Commonwealth law. The main funding for the Institute and its library comes from HEFC. However, in our experience, the collections need to be available to practitioners. Lawyers may not always be willing or able to visit the library in person so a commercial document supply service was devised in the early 1990s, to meet a legal need and to help serve the administration of justice. A significant side-effect of the document supply service has become its ability to generate income to supplement the annual grant from HEFC. The workings of the scheme are set out fully in Gee (1999) but, in outline, practitioners must Join the Library as subscribers and are then able to access our priced document supply service. Full details are available at http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/iservice/iservice.htm.

Since the set-up of the Scottish Parliament, brought into being by the Scotland Act 1998, there are a number of areas of “legislative competence” within which the devolved Parliament has had the remit to legislate. This has resulted in the publication of a whole new series of statutes, statutory instruments and official publications which has made the sourcing of Scottish material more complex than previously.

The Foreign Law Guide (FLAG) Project, which aims to build a Web inventory to the holdings of foreign legal materials in university and college libraries throughout the United Kingdom, is one of about 12 collection management projects, funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP). It is believed to be the only project which included within its research proposal the requirement to carry out a survey of user needs to assist in the design of the end-product of the project: the Web inventory.The purpose of the survey, as stated in the bid document, would be to:

establish the present and future requirements for foreign, comparative and international legal materials

discover what information researchers need on foreign law, how they obtain it and what they expect libraries to provide

provide essential information for decision-making on collection development and influence the production of the law Web map.

The Project Management Committee considered it important to attempt to obtain the views of as wide a range of users of foreign legal materials as possible. Attempts were made to include (a) non-lawyers working in related disciplines, (b) research support staff and PhD. students as well as academics, and (c) law librarians and information officers.

The seminar was designed to be compatible with the theme of the conference. It therefore concentrated on facilitating the limited time available so that participants could discuss, practice and reflect on the effective training skills they are required to use in the workplace when training either individuals or groups. In particular the seminar recognised that more and more we are being asked to train our customers to use new tools and techniques, very often involving IT.

An indexed and annotated copy of the Employment Rights Act 1996 as amended at 1st January 2000, including amendments made by the Employment Relations Act 1999, is included on the professional area of this Web site. DiscLaw Publishing Ltd provides e-LOAD (employment Law on a Disc). The subscription service includes CD-ROMs updated every six months plus a password to their Internet site, updated every three weeks with the latest employment law developments. The site also contains lots of free information based on an earlier issue of the CD.

Costs: Prices start from £5 plus VAT a day for the professional service (£190 plus VAT p.a.)

Contact DiscLaw Publishing Ltd 0870 751 8905 www.emplaw.co.uk