From December 2003, for the first time, people looking for work and those in jobs or training will have a right to complain about discriminatory behaviour based on their sexual orientation and religion or religious belief. Similar protection against discrimination based on age should also some into force in 2006. It seems clear that these regulations represent a significant step forward in addressing unfair discrimination in the UK and in achieving a certain level of uniformity and coherence across discrimination legislation.

In five years at Pinsents I have seen three different library management systems. Our current system, OLIB7, has been in situ since September 2002 and for the most part is working well. But why have we had three in such a short space of time? Why did we choose OLIB7? And is implementing a new system really all that bad?

Selecting my title to span two conference topics, this year's and last, I admit could have been a little tricky, but my inspiration in the end came from music and hopefully you too will see, as we progress through this presentation, just how much our profession can learn from the musicians.

In this article I'll be covering the following:

[bull ] some widely held perceptions of distance learning

[bull ] how distance learning takes place within law at The Nottingham Trent University (NTU)

[bull ] the UK Libraries Plus national support scheme for distance learning students in the UK

[bull ] how I provide support for my distance learners

[bull ] the practical difficulties that distance learners face

[bull ] perceptions or misconceptions? – do my original perceptions still hold true?

[bull ] some ideas for the future

At this point, I should point out that I'm not promoting The Nottingham Trent University as a model of best practice, but just outlining our experiences. If anyone has any more sensible approaches or solutions to the issues I'll be covering then please let me know.

Adolf Sprudzs had a long and distinguished career as a foreign and international law librarian at the University of Chicago Law School, where he developed one of the premier foreign and international law collections in the United States. He was a leader among a generation of foreign and international law librarians who emigrated to the United States after World War II and were responsible for the collections and expertise that now exist in this country.

Jo Tomlinson was responsible for this column, with support from Lindsey. Jo & Lindsey's contact details are given at the end and they will be very pleased to hear from any re-aders who have material to contribute to the column.

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