It has become increasingly common for a reader to follow a URL cited in a court opinion or a law review article, only to be met with an error message because the resource has been moved from its original online address. This form of reference rot, commonly referred to as ‘linkrot’, has arisen from the disconnect between the transience of online materials and the permanence of legal citation, and will only become more prevalent as scholarly materials move online. The present paper*, written by Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert and Lawrence Lessig, explores the pervasiveness of linkrot in academic and legal citations, finding that more than 70% of the URLs within the Harvard Law Review and other journals, and 50% of the URLs within United States Supreme Court opinions, do not link to the originally cited information. In light of these results, a solution is proposed for authors and editors of new scholarship that involves libraries undertaking the distributed, long-term preservation of link contents.

This paper, by Hector MacQueen, assesses the current state of Scots law and the Scottish legal system, arguing that as a small legal system which cannot be self-contained it is inevitably in a state of crisis, from which, however, it will not be rescued by Scotland becoming independent.* Whatever happens after the referendum concerning Scottish Independence on 18 September 2014, the law is in need of active legislative reform, possibly codification, while the courts must become more positive in the attraction of business rather than, as it sometimes seems, seeking to push it away. Mere defence of the status quo will end in disablement and defeat.

This article is written by Rebecca Herle who is the Head of Sales and Marketing at the Incorporated Council of Law Reporting for England & Wales (ICLR). Her article draws on material delivered by two of her colleagues at the ICLR, namely Daniel Hoadley's recent plenary session at the BIALL Conference 2014 called, ‘The Curious Case of the Judgment Enhancers’ and Paul Magrath's article published by Infolaw.co.uk, entitled ‘The Future of Law Reporting’. It also refers in part to Lord Neuberger's speech for the first annual BAILII Lecture (in 2012) entitled ‘No Judgment – No Justice’, and reflects upon the position of the ICLR in the legal profession today. From the birth of the ICLR in 1865 to the present day the article provides a brief history, and then explores the current day issues, of this charitable publisher in its surrounding legal environment. She also offers a glimpse into what the future might hold.

The statute book is a large, complex system; a vast corpus of texts dating back to the thirteenth century, now evolving at a rate of around 100,000 words a month1. The volume and pace of change combine with the constraints of current generation of digital tools to present a real barrier to researchers, limiting the type of research that is currently possible. The statute book is simply too big, and changes too rapidly, for any one person to easily comprehend. This situation is transformed if you view legislation as data, and then apply big data technologies and new data analysis techniques to that data. The aim of the Big Data for Law research project2 is to do just that; applying the latest analytical techniques to legislation, making it possible to research, interrogate and understand the statute book as a whole system. An important part of the initiative is to make available the raw data for conducting this type of research, alongside new tools and methods for working with the content. In this article, John Sheridan, Head of Legislation Services at The National Archives, sets out some of the ideas that underpin the project and describes the new service that researchers can use from Spring 2015.

This paper that is written by Phil Bradley is based on his keynote lecture, which he gave on 12 June 2014 at the BIALL Annual Conference. He considers the growth of information on the internet, both in terms of type and amount. His article considers the difficulties that this flood of data brings with it, the challenges facing traditional search engines when faced with access by mobile devices and applications. The role of privacy and the ‘internet of things’ are also discussed. Finally, there is an overview of the role of the information professional in this new information environment.

Three years ago James Mullan delivered a presentation called “Emerging technologies” and followed this up with an article in Legal Information Management (LIM) called “Making mountains out of molehills: a look at some emerging technologies”1 Two years further on and the Editor of LIM asked him to re-visit the issues and to write a follow-up article on the subject. As a result this paper looks at the current state of play with those technologies and identifies some of the significant technological developments to have taken place since his original article.

In this article Christian Wolf seeks to identify and understand the nature of the profession of law librarianship in Germany. The first question he seeks to address is whether there is a recognised profession at all. He explains some basic principles of German public and labour law and then, having laid this foundation, he describes the profession of law librarianship in Germany in detail.

Big data is more than the sum of the parts; it is about scale but also how we inter-connect once disparate data sets, and mine and analyse them. It is something that has started to make a significant impact everywhere from financial markets to supermarkets. And, as Andy Williamson explains, it is starting to become an important factor in the development of public policy and for the delivery and analysis of public services. Big data offers us powerful new ways to see the world around us but this comes with the challenges of ownership, privacy and misuse: it can be used for good or to constrain people. We have to ensure that, as the uptake of big data increases, our legislation and practice keeps pace, ensuring that mistakes and misuse are prevented.

Smartphones have quickly become a key part of our daily lives. Over 70 percent of people in the UK own such a device and law students are no exception to this far-reaching trend1. The use of these devices has posed some significant questions on the extent of their impact on information seeking behaviour and in relation to information delivery of resources. Zaki Abbas, Andrew MacFarlane and Ayşe Göker, who have recently begun a research project together, seek to not only examine the information seeking behaviours (ISBs) of law students using their Smartphones for academic information retrieval, but also to investigate perspectives from subject law librarians from Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) throughout the UK. There is an impression that students tend to find Smartphones more appealing for their information seeking needs compared to the professional resources and services, such as virtual libraries, which their HEI have already invested in. The result leads to a deep concern from subject librarians that students may be at risk from weakening research skills as well as relying too much on poor information sources not specifically designed to meet their information needs within the academic context5. The authors also suggest that information service providers to be more pro-active in providing information to students through more user-friendly interfaces as well as capitalise on the growing use of the Smartphone as a means to deliver their product4,5,6,15.

David Sugarman reflects briefly on developments regarding legal biography and considers the future role and value of biography within the legal community and especially in the context of socio-legal research.

This article, written by Ivo Vogel and Elisabeth Schrecklinger, deals with the efforts of German libraries to digitise historical legal sources and make them publicly available. Although the main focus is on two selected libraries, a general overview is included. Commercial products are not considered since their contents are likely to become increasingly less relevant due to German law libraries' own initiatives. More attention is paid to problems that have been identified during the implementation of digitisation projects such as the recording of full texts is highlighted. The retrieval of digitised legal materials and, eventually, the digitisation of historical legal gazettes or parliamentary literature is also discussed. This contribution focuses exclusively on the retrospective digitisation of historical legal materials.

This paper is based on a research study commissioned by the Financial Times and the Special Libraries Association (SLA) to explore the evolving value of information management to organisations around the world. Drawing on responses from both full-time information professionals and corporate executives, the research highlights the challenges facing both audiences and reveals a fundamental shift in the model of information management. The paper aims to provide an actionable framework for the continuing success of the information function in any organisation, describing the five essential attributes for modern information professionals. The research was presented by Simon Lord at the BIALL Annual Conference, 2014 and is published in full at: www.ft.com/sla

In this article Sarah Glassmeyer and Pete Smith address, and focus on, ‘open law’ and the technical issues that can enable access to primary law, and the secondary materials associated with it.

In the article Rosemary Auchmuty discusses the nature of, and the approach to, her research into the life of Gwyneth Bebb who in 1913 challenged the Law Society over their refusal to admit women to the solicitors' profession.

In this article Margarethe Sannino shares some information on how legal research works in an international law firm with several offices. The focus is on German law and legal materials. A short introduction to German law is followed by an outline of German research resources in general and then, further on, there are two parts describing specific approaches to research from Margarethe's daily work; research on company/corporate law requests as well as research on legislative acts.