Welcome to the winter issue of Legal Information Management (LIM). This LIM presents a number of articles based on papers given at the BIALL Annual Study Conference which took place in Manchester in June 2017. The focus of the conference programme was ‘Together or apart? Effective ways of working’ and with that in mind, and continuing on from the autumn issue, our first offering this time round relates to Brexit matters as we present a paper that was delivered for the biennial Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture, the keynote speech at the conference.
THE WILLI STEINER MEMORIAL LECTURE 2017
This is the sixth lecture in this series that was established in 2004 in memory of Willi Steiner, an eminent law librarian of national and international prominence. Willi worked at the Squire Law Library, the University of Cambridge (1959–1968) and was then the librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (1968–1982). He was also a founder member of BIALL, was the Honorary President of the association from 1985 until 1988 and, among many achievements, he was editor of the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals.
This lecture was given by David Allen Green, a Senior Consultant at Preiskel & Co. David is also a columnist on law and policy for the Financial Times and a legal blogger via his ‘Jack of Kent’ blog. His lecture, which was given on the same day as the general election, was entitled ‘Brexit and access to legal information’ and was concerned with libraries, information and public policy with particular reference to Brexit. His article for LIM was a later write-up from his speaking notes.
SELECTION OF PAPERS FROM THE BIALL CONFERENCE 2017
A range of other papers were given at the conference, some of which are contained in this section. We start with three pieces written from the commercial sector. Hilary Smith and Miriam Davies have provided two articles, based on their joint presentation at the conference, that are inter-related and based on their collaboration. The title is ‘Working together to provide a library and information enquiry service to Shell's legal community’. Hilary takes a view from the client perspective, Shell, while Miriam views things from the law firm perspective, from Norton Rose Fulbright. Continuing with the commercial sector, Jon Beaumont contributes a piece entitled ‘Knowledge management: a systems case study from Shearman & Sterling LLP’. He describes how and why the firm's ‘Knowledge Center’ was launched in 2015, following a two year planning period, which aimed at consolidating the firm's systems and providing users with a single interface to access any required know-how. Ian Hunter, also from Shearman & Sterling, gives a view on ‘Researching deals and markets’. He considers both the best paid-for and the best free sources and looks at the caveats associated with relying on them. In essence, he asks ‘why don't the sources agree?’ and provides a ‘jargon buster’ and a critique of sources relating to mergers and acquisitions, leveraged finance and capital markets.
Two more articles follow, both written from the HE sector of our profession. There is an article about teaching OSCOLA with Mentimeter, written jointly by Erin Bloxsidge and Alison Skoyles of London South Bank University. This was a small project undertaken to increase student engagement in lecture theatre settings through the use of a web-based audience response system (ARS) called Mentimeter. Using this approach, as a way of supporting the School of Law at the University, they delivered an interactive OSCOLA referencing session to a large capacity lecture theatre. Their article discusses the outcomes of the pilot session and explores benefits and challenges inherent in using technology of this type in a large classroom.
Finally, we have an article entitled ‘How to get students into the library: revamping a university library's welcome campaign’. This was written by Corryn Walker of the Manchester Metropolitan University Library. The article covers the background to, and motivation behind, the project, its aims and objectives and the changes made to improve how the Library welcomes new students to the service.
CURRENT ISSUES
The issue concludes with the regular BIALL/SLS Academic Law Libraries Survey, this time for the academic year 2015/2016, and which, once again, has been compiled and written by David Gee, with support from Laura Griffiths.
CURRENT AWARENESS
We end this LIM in the usual manner with the current awareness section provided by Katherine Read and Laura Griffiths.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As editor, I am enormously grateful for all the excellent contributions received for publication in LIM. I hope that a few further articles relating to the BIALL Conference will be available for publication in the spring 2018 issue of the journal. As always, my thanks go to our colleagues at Cambridge University Press, especially to Hannah Patrick and Craig Baxter, and to the members of the LIM Editorial Board including the chair of the committee, Loyita Worley, and in particular the team of proof-readers for their dedication to the task.
