Welcome to the autumn 2018 issues of Legal information Management (LIM).
FEATURE ARTICLE
The issue opens with a fascinating piece of research relating to the critical role of the court clerk in Crown Courts. As the author, Dvora Liberman, explains in the abstract for this article, “it is surprising that even though Crown Court clerks have been pivotal in trials of the most serious criminal offences, they have been neglected in legal scholarship”. Her research looks at their vital work for a period between 1972 and 2015. The project was conducted in partnership with the London School of Economics Legal Biography Project and National Life Stories, British Library.
MOYS CLASSIFICATION
Three articles make up this short theme relating to the Moys Classification scheme, the system of library classification designed for legal materials. The scheme was designed by Betty Moys and was first published in 1968. By 2013, it had been published in its fifth edition having been revised and expanded by Diana Morris, Helen Garner and Sarah Wheeler. Here in LIM, Helen Garner reviews the progress of the Moys reclassification project at the Bodleian Law Library at Oxford, while Harpreet Dhillon discusses the issues concerning the Middle Temple Library's transition from an alphabetical organisation of textbooks to a subject order using the Moys Classification Scheme. Finally in this section, Megan Guthrie takes a law firm perspective and recounts the experience of reclassifying using Moys at McCann FitzGerald, one of Ireland's top law firms.
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
This issue of LIM includes two articles from colleagues abroad. Victoria Elizabeth Baranow, a Research Librarian at Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP in their Toronto office, looks at the changing role of law librarians in the context of an evolving legal profession. On a completely different topic, Gloria Orrego Hoyos and Esteban Pizá, from Buenos Aires, discuss the challenges and obstacles to conducting legal research about personal drug consumption (minimum doses) in Latin America.
CURRENT INTERESTS
Under the Current Interests heading Caroline Mack gives an introduction to the knowledge and information management services in the Legal Directorate of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office describing both the development of the organisation's library services in recent years and the development of her own role from that of Legal Librarian to Knowledge and Information Manager. David Gee offers his latest report analysing the results of the SLS/BIALL Academic Law Library Survey for 2016/2017; as usual this is a substantial piece of work and I am very grateful to David for compiling the results so quickly after the survey took place so that we could include it in this issue of the LIM. Before that there are two short pieces that are connected to each other. Matt Terrell, of Justis, introduces the inaugural Law and Technology International Writing Competition which was launched in 2017 and aimed at attracting students to write a 1,000 word piece in the style of a blog entry. The winning entry in this competition, which follows Matt's introduction, was written by Róisín Costello from Trinity College Dublin with the title of The Tortoise and the Hare? Due Process and Unconstitutionally Obtained Evidence in the Digital Age. Many congratulations to Róisín on her success! I am very pleased to be able to publish her piece here in LIM.
CURRENT AWARENESS
As is customary, this issue of LIM concludes with the current awareness section compiled by Katherine Read and Laura Griffiths at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to thank all of our contributors for their submissions to the autumn issue of LIM. Continuing thanks go to our colleagues at Cambridge University Press, our publisher, and to the members of the LIM Editorial Board, in particular the chair of the committee, Loyita Worley, and the team of proof-readers for their continuing support and dedication.
