On flight NW43 from Gatwick I am the excitable passenger in seat 22B glancing nervously at the permafrost several thousand feet below as we head rapidly over Greenland (?) for the USA. I am travelling (with much thanks to BIALL and AALL) towards the 94th AALL Meeting and Conference (my first) being held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I am due to speak in session H3 about the Social Science Information Gateway and the work led by IALS to develop the law section of the Internet Gateway (http://www.sosig.ac.uk/law).

The adjacent quotation is from Gwyn Thomas (1913–1981), the Anglo-Welsh novelist and playwright, who fulminated against the revival of Catalan with a force which is scarcely comprehensible, despite the fact that Spanish, or perhaps one should say Castilian, was his preferred choice of language both to learn at school and at Oxford, and later to teach. The force of his invective becomes explicable however when one remembers that he lived at a time when the Welsh language was starting to be just the sort of ‘first-class nuisance’ which he chided Catalan for being, and was about to commence a similar sort of revival.

The first issue of the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers came out at the end of 1995, and sprang out of the work I was doing on my Web site (http://www.venables.co.uk) as well as my work as an IT consultant for lawyers. Although the Web site is free to the user, I did hope that some money could be made from the Newsletter! Initially, the Newsletter went to just a few tens of clients and subscribers but I am glad to say that it has grown steadily since then and now has around 1,000 paid subscribers.

The use of intelligent technologies in legal document preparation continue to develop so as to integrate with new software and operating system developments. At the end of May products were launched by both the West Group (WestCiteLink) and LexisNexis containing smart tag features allowing integration between Windows XP (Microsoft's new operating system to be launched in the UK in October) and legal databases. As users type, smart tags activate automatically and find and identify legal citations to statutes, cases etc. Once identified a set of options can provide automatic link creation to the documents on Westlaw or LexisNexis, without the user having to leave the Word document. WestCiteLink is the result of a strategic alliance between West Group and Microsoft. As the cursor hangs over the citation the user is presented with options which can:

• find the document on Westlaw

• determine the KeyCite history

• identify citing references

• create a hyperlink to the document

• mark the cite for inclusion in a Table of Authorities.

How does a supplier of information products, whether in an electronic or hardcopy format, go about keeping a customer happy when that customer happens to be a law librarian? The challenge of providing excellent service is of as much interest to the law librarian as a provider of services as it is to him or her as a consumer of services. For the session entitled “I can't get no satisfaction?” a panel of speakers was created consisting of David Smalley (Commercial Director at Lawtel), Paul Baker (Executive Director, Operations at Butterworths) and Pippa Hall (Customer Services Manager at Sweet & Maxwell). The panel was asked to focus on customer care and how it might be improved. As leading players in the field of customer care within the legal information sector how have they dealt with the issues of billing and customer support and how have they communicated with those customers that have raised problems? Do the speakers see a role for law librarians in the process of product development? How do the speakers see their products developing in the future and how do they expect future developments to be communicated to law librarians in the future?

BIALL hosted a winter regional meeting at the Signet Library in Edinburgh in December.This event gave members who are not able to attend the annual study conference June an opportunity to get together and discuss current professional issues. Local librarians who are not BIALL members were also invited to attend, and there was a good turnout from the Scottish and North of England law librarians groups. The Signet Library, a private subscription library for members of the Society of Writers to the Signet in Scotland, provided a wonderful setting for the talks, discussion sessions and the Friday evening dinner: many us envied Audrey Walker and her team coming to work each day in such elegant surroundings.

I saw the ad for ‘Head Librarian’ at Central European University in Prague in July 1993 after I had stopped for coffee in a grotty service area on the M5, en route from the impossible job in Glasgow to the exciting job in Somerset (holding both of those down simultaneously was an interesting geographical challenge in itself…). Of course, I knew I had no chance at all, but applied anyway, and by some minor miracle they offered me the post.

You will all have noticed the proliferation of US law firms with offices in the UK, mainly London. Sidley Austin Brown & Wood (SABW) was formed in May 2001 as a result of a merger and is currently the second largest US law firm office in London (27 partners, 85 fee earners, 3 full-time library staff, one part timer, one freelance.) Like most of the US firms in London SABW concentrates on financial and corporate work — international finance, corporate securities, capital markets, tax and property.

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.

Legal Information Management is happy to accept articles on the wide range of topics which might be of interest to BIALL members and those operating in allied fields. Although each issue focuses on a particular topic or topics, there is room within the magazine for coverage of other matters and we look to the BIALL membership and those practising in legal information or allied fields to write on any matter which concerns them or of which they have experience.

“It's so easy to find information on the Internet”; “it's impossible to find information on the Internet”. Both these statements are heard frequently, sometimes in the same breath, but which is true.

I came to Thailand 18 months ago. An amazing opportunity had arisen to work in Bangkok and as my ‘other half’ was also being transferred, off we set. The contract was to work in our Bangkok office for 2/3 years in a regional role supplying commercial information and research to the five Asian offices and, of course, experience the life of another country.

In October 2000 I was lucky enough to receive a BIALL bursary to attend the New Zealand Law Librarians Group conference in Christchurch, New Zealand. I had a stimulating and motivating time there and would like to encourage all BIALL members to apply for an overseas bursary at some point–the experience is so worthwhile, which ever conference you go to.

I had always heard that BIALL delegates to the CALL conference were warmly welcomed, and this year proved to be no exception. From the moment I arrived in Canada, I was greeted like an old friend, reflecting the close co-operation between our two Associations over the years. The size of the conference and structure of the programme make it very easy for BIALL delegates to participate, and the facilities in the London Convention Centre were excellent, making this a very enjoyable trip.

Many years ago, not long after I first started work in an academic library in Northern New South Wales, I had a conversation with a colleague about how exciting it would be to work in ‘an old, traditional university like Oxford’ in what seemed from a distance, a ‘real university’ as opposed to the smallish modern one I was currently employed in. This vague musing on a quiet afternoon during the stifling build up of a regular afternoon tropical storm was strangely prophetic. In between assisting individual students with their research into the relationship between aliens and the Internet (I'm not joking), I was dreaming about the musty old collections, academic robes, traditions and reading rooms which reeked of intellectual strain and rigour. Well, you know what they say about being careful what you wish for!