The Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture 2022

This issue begins with the publication of the 8th Willi Steiner Memorial Lecture. The lecture was delivered at the BIALL Annual Conference on 8th July 2022 by Jules Winterton on the subject of BAILII (British and Irish Legal Information Institute) which provides access to the most comprehensive set of British and Irish primary legal materials, and other resources for free on the internet.Footnote ¹ His lecture looked at the history of BAILII and its achievements over the last 22 years, the features of the service and the challenges of publishing judgments. Jules also looked at BAILII in the context of recent government initiatives by the Ministry of Justice and with regard to The National Archives, and outlined plans for the future of BAILII.

I am delighted that LIM has, once again, been able to publish the lecture. All seven of the previous lectures have appeared in the journal and are easily accessible via the Cambridge University Press' Cambridge Core platform.

The lecture is a celebration of WAFP Steiner, an eminent law librarian of national and international standing who died in 2003.Footnote ² The inaugural memorial lecture in his memory took place in 2005.

Figure 1

Willi Steiner (1918–2003).

Willi Steiner had a remarkable career in law librarianship and his achievements were many. He was a founder member of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL). He was was librarian at both the Squire Law Library at Cambridge (1959–1968) and then the Library of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS)(1968–1982) where he was also Secretary to the Institute (1968–1971). It is entirely appropriate that this lecture should have been given by Jules Winterton, retired Director and Librarian of IALS and now CEO of BAILII.Footnote ³ Willi's interests in law and legal information were wide and I have no doubt that he would have thoroughly appreciated, and approved of, the subject of this year's lecture.

LEGAL INFORMATICS

Our recent interest in issues concerning the world of legal informatics continues in this edition of LIM. Firstly, Jake Hearn contributes a piece entitled ‘A Library is a Growing Organism’: Redefining Artificial Intelligence and the Role of the Information Professional in the Corporate Legal World.’ Meanwhile, Suzan Verberne, Gineke Wiggers and Gerrit-Jan Zwenne address the question: ‘Citation Metrics for Legal Information Retrieval: Scholars and Practitioners Intertwined?’ With such interest in the subjects of information technology, artificial intelligence, information retrieval and other related matters, and given the various articles that LIM has published recently in these areas, a ‘spotlight collection’ on the LIM homepage will bring many of these articles together in one place for reference.Footnote ⁴

RECRUITMENT

Following the two articles published in the previous spring LIM on approaches to recruiting, in this issue the recruitment firm CB Resourcing give some thoughts and insights on ‘Recruitment in the Legal Information Industry.’

BOOK REVIEWS AND CURRENT AWARENESS

Two book reviews and the ever-present current awareness feature bring this issue to a close.

Having described the content of this issue, this editorial piece is not quite complete as I wish to note with great sadness the recent deaths of two of our law library colleagues.

MARY BLAKE

Mary Blake died on 28 February 2022. A few years ago, Mary had given notice of her express wish that there should be no obituary published in the event of her death. However, it is appropriate to note with gratitude the many significant contributions she made to the work of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL). She was an early member of the Association and was Hon. Secretary (1976–1987). She was also Hon. President (1993–1999) as well as being the BIALL Archivist (until 2010). She also wrote a history of BIALL.Footnote ⁵ We're very grateful for all that Mary did for our Association and our thoughts have been with her family and friends over these past few months.

HEATHER SEMPLE

We have also lost Heather Semple who died on 10 March 2022 following a short illness. Heather was the Head of the Library and Information Service at the Law Society of Northern Ireland in Belfast. She had worked there for some 32 years and had an extensive knowledge of the Northern Ireland legislative system. Heather was a true legal information professional and was very well respected. She contributed a great deal to the work of BIALL. She served on the Legal Information Group (now the Supplier Liaison Group), the PR & Promotions Committee and was also a member of the BIALL Irish Group. She presented at BIALL's Annual Conference, at events organised by the Professional Development Committee and wrote articles for Legal Information Management. She was often a delegate at the Annual Conference and will be much missed by all who knew her, and especially by her colleagues and friends in Ireland. A further piece about Heather has been published, for BIALL members to read, in the May 2022 issue of the BIALL Newsletter.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to record my thanks to all my colleagues on the LIM Editorial Board. I'm particularly grateful to Sinéad Curtin, in her capacity as Chair of the LIM Editorial Board, for all her support. Sinéad will step down as Chair during the course of the summer, though she will be remaining on the board for a further year. Helen Garner will succeed Sinéad as Chair. Finally, my thanks go to our colleagues at Cambridge University Press (CUP) - Craig Baxter, Production Editor for Journals and Jamie Davidson, Editor, HSS Journals.