A survey showed weed scientists agree that basic agronomy, crop production and plant-oriented courses are essential in weed science education. Although there was no consensus on the structure of a core curriculum or even on whether one was needed, they agreed that curricula must be constructed to fit student interests, goals, and abilities.

Hester Swift writes about the successful one-day courses on foreign and international legal research that have been run since 2009 at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) in conjunction with BIALL. These courses have been a collaborative venture between the Foreign and International Law Librarians at the Bodleian Law Library at Oxford, the Squire Law Library at Cambridge, and the IALS Library, together with law librarians from the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies and the University of Cardiff. The courses have attracted delegates from many different sectors of the legal information profession. The post of Foreign and International Law Librarian, or Foreign, Comparative and International Law Librarian, is relatively new to the UK, but has a long history in the United States. The BIALL-IALS foreign and international law training initiative complements the cooperation of the Foreign Law Research (FLARE) Group.

Josephine Bailey, the inaugural recipient of BIALL's Professional Studies Bursary, provides a student's perspective on current LIS qualifications, what they can offer to individuals hoping to enter the profession and the challenges facing new professionals today. Her observations and comments are based on her experiences of the MA course in Librarianship and Information Services Management which is offered by the University of Sheffield and is currently ranked as the top university for Librarianship and Information Management.

For over 100 years colleges of higher and further education have played important roles in the education of library and information professionals. However, the last decade has seen some significant changes in both the structure of teaching departments and the types of courses they deliver. This paper, delivered by Martin De Saulles at the 39th Annual BIALL Conference held in Dublin in June 2008, outlines some of the pressures currently facing the library and information profession and describes how teaching departments have responded in terms of course developments.