Welcome to issue three for 2012 of Legal Information Management. This edition of the journal contains a range of articles written from a number of different perspectives. As ever, I am tremendously grateful to all the contributors for their timely efforts, as well as to the members of the LIM Editorial Board for their guidance. In particular, I wish to record special thanks to Sarah Froggatt, of Reynolds Porter Chamberlain LLP (RPC), who has chaired the LIM Editorial Board in recent years and who has provided invaluable support and encouragement to the Editor. Sarah completed her term as Chair following the recent BIALL Annual General Meeting, held in Belfast, and has been succeeded by Dunstan Speight, of Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP, who very kindly agreed to step up from Board Member to Chair.
Once again, where the preparation of this issue of LIM is concerned, I wish to thank Sue Perkins, Production Editor (Journals) at our publishing house, Cambridge University Press, for her assistance and patience. I also wish to thank Paul Banks for his invaluable assistance with proof-reading this issue.
LEGAL LITERATURE: UNLOCKING ACCESS
The theme for Autumn relates to issues surrounding access to legal material; essentially, open access publishing, free access to the law, and searching legal information. The resulting array of articles begins with a progress report about BAILII (the British and Irish Legal Information Institute) following an extensive survey carried out in 2012. This piece was jointly written by three of the figures who have been closely associated with the project, namely Cynthia Fellows, Philip Leith and Joe Ury. This part of the theme on free access to law is continued by Daniel Poulin who writes from the Canadian perspective and with reference to CanLII.
Philip Chung, Andrew Mowbray and Graham Greenleaf, the Co-Directors of the Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), discuss the need for an open source search engine that allows searching across, not just European languages, but also, and crucially, in the many Asian languages as well. Frances Pinter and Nicholas Bown, of Knowledge Unlatched – “a not-for-profit library consortium”, present a paper relating to open access models taken from a publishing perspective.
Steve Whittle, of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS), writes on open access concerning the journal, Amicus Curiae, and discusses some of the transitional issues in relation to the move from print to web publishing. Finally Gregory Gordon, representing the Social Science Research Network, discusses strategic access where scholarly communication is concerned.
CURRENT ISSUES
The above sub-heading has taken on a subtle new look with a change from current topics to current issues! A fascinating account of the project LawSync, established at Sheffield Hallam University, is provided by Pete Smith, Richard Whittle and Peter Griffith. The project looks at the changing landscape associated with the legal services market and seeks to encourage Law Schools and law students to shape the future.
David Gee (of IALS), who took up the reigns from Peter Clinch following his retirement, submits the results of the extensive annual SLSBIALL Academic Law Library Survey for 2010/2011. James Mullan, of Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP and newly elected President of BIALL, writes from the law firm perspective on legal project management. Dunstan Speight and Jennifer Darroch, again from the commercial legal sector, address issues relating to copyright compliance particularly in connection with information re-use.
PRACTICAL MATTERS
In the Practical Matters section of this issue, Nadine Fathers provides further advice in a second article relating to finding information on pending appeal cases (the first article having appeared in LIM in Spring 2012, 12(1)). Jackie Fishleigh, a regular contributor to LIM and former President of the Association, offers some observations on e-learning in the context of the Legal Foundations Course.
CURRENT AWARENESS
As always, much gratitude goes to Katherine Read and Laura Griffiths for their Current Awareness section.
CORRECTION
Gender Equity in Canadian Ice Hockey: the Legal Struggle
In the previous issue for Summer 12(2) of LIM on page 121, in relation to the above article written by John Eaton, there was a mis-quote which should have read, “my childhood in the 1960s” rather than “my childhood in the 16.0”. Apologies to the author for that error.
