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 Allie Lustigman gives recommendations for creating a knowledge business strategy. The steps outlined are based upon the premise of using a strategy to review the information service and formulate a clear plan for the future function, particularly in terms of expanding the service; however, they can be applied to differing types of strategies. The article looks at various methods in which a review can be carried out and then outlines the strategy document itself, summarising the different sections that make up the document. Additionally, this article looks into the uses and benefits of creating a business strategy for the information professional.

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 article, written by Emily Stannard, is based on her presentation at the 2015 BIALL Annual Conference. The article discusses the recent statutory changes to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and reflects on the impact it has had on information professionals, especially those working within the cultural heritage and education sectors. The wording of the legislation is considered in detail with the aid of case law to provide context where necessary, particularly with reference to fair dealing provisions. Developments within the Digital Single Market of the European Union also have a significant impact on national copyright law, and it is imperative that information professionals remain informed about upcoming copyright initiatives as well as making sense of the new statutory instruments.

This paper, by Richard Collier, reviews the dominant methodological and theoretical approaches that have shaped socio-legal scholarship on masculinities and law to date. It presents a flavour of contemporary work in the field and, looking specifically to the concerns of the ALS/British Library/SLSA socio-legal training day on sources and methods in Law, Gender and Sexuality, considers selected issues around methods and sources involved in analysing masculinities and law. The paper suggests work in this area has drawn on a diverse range of archives and content and that there is considerable variation in how legal scholarship has sought to approach the topic of masculinity.

This article by Rachel Brett highlights the key issues to be aware of when carrying out international company searches and reviews the information available online from the national company registries for some of the key European and offshore jurisdictions including: Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

This article by Renê Francisco Hellman and Mariana Cesto aims to analyse how the New Civil Procedure Code will influence the Brazilian legal education system. The new Code is opposed to ‘surprise decisions’ and emphasizes the need for substantial opportunity to contradict the opponent's submissions. This will constrain judicial decision-making. On that basis, new challenges appear for teaching, and they must be faced and solved in order to make the new prescriptions effective. The proposal is to use an interdisciplinary approach to reformulate the legal education system. This would effectively provide better support to future lawyers regarding their development, making them better qualified to operate within the legal system.

Over the past few years the cataloguing community has seen radical changes in cataloguing standards, changes which appear to have been largely ignored by legal information professionals. This is a mistake according to Helen Doyle; the new cataloguing model can have enormous implications for the legal community, particularly in the spheres of information and knowledge management, and the profession is missing a huge opportunity by ignoring it. A new cataloguing standard (RDA) has been developed based on an alternative theoretical approach, known as “Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records” (FRBR). FRBR seeks to change the way we approach the bibliographic universe: from stand-alone, individual repositories of information to networks of linked data built on a structured hierarchy. Commercial law firms are constantly trying to make connections between their traditional resources, online repositories, internal know-how, etc, but struggle to achieve complete synchronicity. FRBR provides a solution to this knowledge management problem: all resources (including people, events and subjects) become searchable, and because everything is linked, users can access information by navigating to it, establishing their own pathway through the data. Moreover, the major legal databases are already utilising linked data in this way – it is time for law firms to catch up.

In this short article Professor Fiona Cownie provides a brief note to accompany Elizabeth Dawson's guide to the archival sources at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London.

The internet and the World Wide Web (www) has allowed the free flow of information across countries. Peter Martin and Tom Bruce from Cornell Law School pioneered the development of the ‘Free Access to Law Movement’ around the world. The Australian Legal Information Institute and various other Legal Information Institutes (LIIs) were established by adopting the Montreal Declaration at the Law via Internet Conference held in 2002. As a member of the United Nations, India adopted the UNESCO policy guidelines for the development and promotion of governmental public domain information. In India, the National Informatics Centre has played a leading role in supporting the maintenance and dissemination of Indian government public information that is useful for legal education, research and practice. This paper by Priya Rai, and Akash, gives a brief informative overview of the ‘free access to law movement’ resources pertaining to India. These resources have been categorised for easier understanding: parliamentary resources, legislative resources, case laws, law reform reports, international treaties and legal scholarship and journals. The article also provides an overview of the Legal Information Institute of India extending its contribution to disseminating Indian legal information.

This article, by Mercedes Robba and Mariana Lavalle, deals with the civil right to reproduction and procreative liberty aroused by the Argentinian legislation and Court's decisions, in the light of the new concept of family in the country. This contribution focuses exclusively on the barriers to equal access to reproductive health in Argentina, taking into account infertility, infecundity and childlessness, according to the right to raise a family in conditions of equality and freedom.

This paper, which was written by Rona Blair, is drawn from her presentation at the 2015 BIALL Annual Conference. The article looks at the challenges of working in a geographically dispersed team and how to overcome these challenges using pragmatic and workable procedures.

In Queensland, Australia, community legal centres utilise a range of different types of information technology to provide legal advice and assistance to their clients, which include marginalised and disadvantaged groups. In this article Emma Phillips and James Farrell considers the use and efficacy of different types of information technology within the community legal sector, discussing the findings of recent empirical research on this issue in the context of the relevant research literature. The article then explores issues associated with the use of information technology in the provision of legal information and advice, including the limitations associated with this technology in the context of the delivery of legal assistance to vulnerable clients.

The article, by Elizabeth Dawson, provides a brief guide to some potential archival sources at IALS for gender based research, focussing particularly on the admission of women to the legal profession after the First World War and beyond. Sources will include the records of legal education, academic and membership organisations and material relating to professional practice. The article also provides guidance to researchers on using the IALS Archive.

Claire Greening explores some of the challenges that library and information professionals face when weighing up hard copy and online resources. Rather than trying to establish a preferred or ‘best’ format, this article instead explores the advantages that both formats have to offer and considers how they can co-exist within the law library. The article concludes with some questions to ask when purchasing and organising resources and explores some of the practical considerations to take into account regarding training.

This paper is adapted from a presentation given by Sara Roberts at the 2015 BIALL Annual Conference. On September 4th 2010 Christchurch suffered the first of a series of catastrophic earthquakes which continued over the next two years and damaged much of the city. During this time the University of Canterbury suffered greatly, both through physical damage to the campus and from a loss of students willing to come and study in Christchurch. Subsequently, the dedicated Law Library on campus was closed and it was necessary to reassess the service in the light of severely reduced resources. More than four years on from that first earthquake, the law collection is situated in the central library on campus, and the number of professional law librarians supporting the service has reduced from four to two. Yet despite the changes the service has not diminished and, indeed, is stronger in some areas.

This article is written by Paul Magrath who is the Head of Product Development and Online Content at the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England and Wales (ICLR). His article explores the issues surrounding the custodianship of those public legal documents, such as court judgments, which form primary sources of law but which may also contain private data, and looks at the way custodians of such data can also act as gatekeepers, enhancing or inhibiting access by the public as well as more specialised users. It expands upon an article published by Infolaw.co.uk entitled “Custodians and gatekeepers: maintaining access to public legal information”, and refers to recent case law involving the tension between information in the public domain and the individual's privacy and “right to be forgotten” by search engines. The article also looks at how court documents are made accessible in other jurisdictions and imagines how things might be improved in our own courts, before concluding that the model of a not-for-profit organisation, such as the ICLR or BAILII (the British and Irish Legal Information Institute), may work as well if not better than public or private management of judgments and other legal public information.

This paper, by Polly Russell, offers an introduction to the material available to researchers in the recently launched ‘Sisterhood & After: an Oral History of the Women's Liberation Movement’ archive at the British Library. Drawing from the archive's oral history recordings, the author demonstrates how they can be used to examine the ways that legislative changes are experienced and raise questions about the relation between legislative change, cultural change and the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM). The paper argues that these oral history recordings provide a unique opportunity to reflect on the ways that legislative and structural change were experienced by WLM activists in their everyday lives.

The ever increasing capabilities of online legal research platforms have revolutionised the strategies we adopt in tackling routine research questions. It is now possible, for example, to comprehensively identify later judicial references to any given earlier case at the click of a button. However, we are potentially running the risk of believing that the online platforms are capable of providing us with answers to questions that they are not yet able to deliver. In this short article Daniel Hoadley focuses on the capability of the current spread of online research platforms to answer a frequent and fundamental legal research question: “is this case still good law?”

In this article Ruth Bird examines the issues around moving, or relocating, a library. Drawing on her experiences of moving, relocating and renovating, and in the context of current work that is happening at the Bodleian Law Library (BLL), she compares the issues in relation to both law firm libraries and academic libraries. The article examines space management and collection management issues, planning, allocating roles and how the burden of moves can be shared in a collaborative way. Ruth also looks at the ‘people’ issues and the implications for collections.