Welcome to the New Year (very belatedly!) and to the first issue of Legal Information Management for 2016. We start by reflecting on the life and career of one of our colleagues, Barbara Zolynski who died on the 6 October 2015. Barbara had a varied, interesting and rewarding career and two of her colleagues and friends, Jane Webber and Clare Costello, pay tribute to her. In their own words Barbara was a “gifted librarian, a supportive and trustworthy manager and a woman of the highest calibre”.
This issue of LIM features a range of articles from different aspects of our legal information profession, and indeed from a little beyond too as, firstly, we hear about developments in that closely related area of government official publications.
FOCUS ON OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS
In this short section, Jennie Grimshaw presents an overview of the transition of UK government publishing from print to electronic and describes the tools being developed by the British Library, in collaboration with the other five legal deposit libraries, to collect, preserve, organise and provide access to born digital government publications. Hannah Chandler writes about official publishing from the perspective of the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford and describes the challenges of not only giving access to information in perpetuity, but also making it accessible to the information professional and user.
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Our International perspectives section brings three contributions from North America. First, Margo Jeske, Channarong Itahchomphoo and Emily Landriault begin this section by contributing a piece entitled The Intersection of Freedom of Information, Privacy Legislation and Library Services in Canadian Jurisdictions. Then, Cheryl Caballero, Erica Smith and Rosalind Guldner, members of the Ontario Legislative Assembly indexing team, describe the challenges of indexing legislative text and how they set about meeting them. Finally, Alison Shea, from Fordham Law Library, looks at No-Cost and Low-Cost Ways to Monitor U.S. Legal Information.
CURRENT ISSUES
The Current Awareness section brings together articles on a number of different topics. Rosemary Auchmuty and Erika Rackley present us with a celebration of 100 years of women in law in the UK and Ireland through the ‘Women's Legal Landmarks Project’. Steve Whittle, of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, describes how the historic case papers from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council have been made available online. Michael Maher reflects on the history of the library at the Law Society as it notches up 184 years. Daniel Bates provides the first of two papers, based on his presentation at the 2015 BIALL Conference, concerning the process for creating high quality audio and video recordings to capture knowledge and experience in an organisation. Finally, Josephine Bailey who was the inaugural recipient of BIALL's Professional Studies Bursary, gives a student's perspective on current LIS qualifications, what they can offer to individuals hoping to enter the profession and the challenges facing new library professionals in today's world.
CURRENT AWARENESS
As always, grateful thanks go to Katherine Read and Laura Griffiths of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies for the current awareness section.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As always, as editor I am very grateful to all contributors to this issue of LIM. Thanks also go to our colleagues at Cambridge University Press, especially Craig Baxter, the new Production Editor for Journals, and Hannah Patrick, and to all the members of the LIM Editorial Board including the Chair of that committee, Dunstan Speight, and the team of proof-readers. Particular ‘thanks’ and recognition go to Wendy Lynwood who recently stepped down from the LIM Board. Wendy was an excellent proof-reader and committee member. Following Wendy's departure, we welcome Loyita Worley to proof-reading duties for this issue of LIM; she joins Paul Banks and Julie Keys as our regular proof-readers.
