Zosia Carson
This issue carries an obituary for Zosia, who very sadly died much too young at the end of 2007, by Catherine McArdle. Zosia is fondly remembered by her many friends for her joie de vivre and general capacity for making life a more enjoyable experience for all those who came into contact with her. She will be sadly missed by the Association for whom she worked very hard.
BIALL 40th Annual Conference 2008
After the inclement weather of Sheffield in 2007, which of course did not detract from the exceptionally high quality of the papers delivered there, we were relieved to avoid rain for most of the Dublin Conference. Because of the way the copy dates for LIM fall, we are unable to bring the papers in this issue. There is an exception in the case of Peter Clinch, who has kindly managed to write up his presentation on the context of the SLS/BIALL Academic Law Library Survey, so that it can appear in this issue alongside the results from the latest survey for 2006/2007.
We are also pleased to publish a timely article by Chris Holland from the Law Society on their new collaborative online service with Lexis Nexis which won the Halsbury Award at the Conference for Best Legal Information Service – Non-Commercial Sector.
How the City Works
For some time we have been struggling to cover this topic which we hope will be of general interest. We have finally managed to persuade law librarians, an archivist and lawyers to write for us and this issue contains the first of a series of articles on the topic. Peter Savage, who is a solicitor in the corporate department of Cobbetts, has written a very detailed yet lucid account of the various approaches companies can take to raising funds on the debt and equity markets. Janice Clarke has produced an excellent survey of the basic hard copy and electronic resources needed for a shipping law library and Hilary Smith describes the work of Kennedys, a leading insurance litigation firm, and the materials needed in such a practice.
Finally Philippa Smith, who is the Principal Archivist at the Guildhall Library, provides us with some historical information on the records of the City of London Livery Companies. Our Winter issue will continue with further articles on this theme.
Current Topics
It is time once again for publication of the SLS/BIALL Survey, as mentioned earlier. There was a lower response to the survey this year with ten fewer institutions replying, but Peter Clinch is confident that the results present a reasonably accurate picture of the current state of academic law libraries in the UK. This is an important moment in legal academia as the SLS Libraries Sub-Committee is currently reviewing the Statement of Standards of University Law Library Provision, and part of the Survey was devoted to an information gathering exercise for the revision.
David Gee has written an excellent survey of the current state of UK Copyright legislation, which covers recent developments on database rights and should answer all those nagging questions that come up about copyright.
Lesley Dingle has interviewed Professor Peter Stein, another venerable Cambridge academic, about his brilliant career in Roman law and we are pleased that she has chosen to publish with us again.
From Our Own Correspondent
We are grateful to Mike Saporito from the Boston Social Law Library for writing about the new collaboration, between his library and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library here in London, in setting up a mutual document delivery service. The project is proceeding successfully and it will be interesting to see whether further collaboration will be possible. For example, in the reference services area.
Current Awareness and Book Reviews
I am as always grateful to Katherine Read and Laura Griffiths for the immaculately prepared Current Awareness column and to Michael Oberwarth for ably organising the Book Review section.
