The BIALL Blog

It was with great sadness that BIALL today learnt that the City Information Group has ceased trading.

According to the press release which was issued earlier today, the group has been seriously affected by the downturn that has affected many individuals, organisations and firms within the City.

The City Information Group has been around for 20 years and will be sadly missed by anyone who has attended any of the seminars they've hosted.

The BIALL How Do I? wki was launched during the Manchester conference during "Have your say" The site which uses free software from PBWorks began life as a space for the PR committee to share information and organise their committee meetings and then became a platform for members of the committee to save useful answers posted to the LIS-LAW email distribution list.

Navigating the wiki is easy, members can browse via broad subject headings (Legislation, Cases, Treaties etc), via the A-Z index or by searching the Wiki.

The Committee believe the wiki will be a useful tool, particularly for solo librarians who don’t have colleagues to bounce ideas off and to new starters to the profession who are just finding their feet. We know, as well, that there will be something for everyone so have a look!

For the time being access to the wiki to make amendments to pages is restricted to members of the Committee. If you wish to add comments to the wiki, you can request “Reader” access which will activate the Comments function or you can “Contact the wki Owner” to suggest any amendments or additions to the wiki.

The wiki is constantly evolving and developing so the PR and Promotions Committee would welcome any comments or suggestions about the wiki. The full contact details of all the members of this committee are available on the BIALL Website.

Last month the Guardian reported that the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has a budget deficit of over $24 billion, thinks he can make savings by getting rid of ‘expensive textbooks’ in schools by replacing them with ebooks.

Tara Brabazon's article from the Times Higher Education Supplement, questions whether in this case, educational technology has been 'introduced to cut costs in resources, not to enhance existing standards'.

She also looks at some interesting emerging research that suggests 'screen reading tends towards data grabbing, power browsing and key-word searching' not 'deeper, immersed' engagement.

As part of the Legal Information Group's (LIG) work the committee is reviewing the BIALL Code of Good Practice for Law Publishers. The code was launched at the Harrogate conference in June 2005. It has therefore been running long enough for the Legal Information Group to have formed an opinion of its effectiveness.

LIG see two main difficulties with the Code in its current form. Firstly, on several occasions when publishers signed up to the Code, they sent a letter to LIG outlining the areas that they were not prepared to implement fully. This leads to a situation where different publishers have agreed to different standards, and could be confusing for BIALL members. Secondly, it is not clear what LIG or BIALL could do to attempt to enforce the Code if we decided that a publisher was in breach of its commitments.

The Legal Information Group plans to make a recommendation to Council in July 2009 that a different approach be taken to the Code in future. In advance of the recommendation, they would like to hear BIALL members views.

The basic concept is to shift the Code from a prescriptive document to an aspirational one, rewarding publishers for following its principles rather than criticising them for not doing so. Of course, this does not mean that LIG will stop representing the interests of BIALL members regarding specific complaints. LIG would like answers to the following questions, although any comments will be gratefully received and carefully considered:

• Should the principles of the Code be applied to other suppliers of legal information besides publishers? (eg Hammicks, Wildys)
• What principles would you like to be included in the Code?
• How should publishers’ performance in this context be assessed?
• How should publishers’ performance in this context be rewarded? (eg award at the BIALL conference, symbol for inclusion on publisher website)
  

Please send your comments to David Percik (Chair of LIG). The closing date for responses to the consultation is Tuesday 30th June.

The winners of the Halsbury’s Awards 2009 were announced on Thursday 18 June at the 40th British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) Annual Conference held in Manchester.

The winners, in each category, were announced as follows;

Best Legal Information Services (Non-Commercial Sector):

The Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library

Best Legal Information Services (Commercial Sector):

Clarke Willmott LLP Information Services, Birmingham

Best Legal Information Services (Commercial Sector) - London Only:

CMS Cameron KcKenna LLP Knowledge & Information Services

The BIALL Website has more information and pictures from the award ceremony.

Visit the the redeveloped and redesigned website of the British & Irish Association of Law Librarians

The BIALL web committee have been working hard over the last year to bring you a site with an updated look and feel, a more intuitive site architecture, a better search function and more ways to get new content to you. You can:

• Sign up to RSS feeds or email updates to find out BIALL news, events and job listings
• View the BIALL Newsletter, Legal Information Management and other publications online
• Find out information about training courses and the BIALL conference
• Find out what Council and the committees are up to
• And more!

We hope that you enjoy the new site and look forward to receiving any feedback that you may have. Please forward any comments on to jennifer.vass@freshfields.com, BWEB Chair

Day three of the conference started (somewhat blearily for certain members of the audience) with a very interesting and informative talk by Vanessa Gamet of Kings College discussing the Terrorism Act and Patriot Acts in the UK and US, and their impact on and responses from the librarian community.

This was followed by a very entertaining session on records management from Paul Duller of Tribal Group. This was a very interesting session that highlighted best (and worst!) practice in records management, and gave us all some good suggestions on records management both at a personal and organisational level. I'm sure after this session we were all keen to get back to our desks and start implementing some grass-roots records management policies!

After a quick break for tea we had Laurence Bebbingham from Nottingham University talking on the legal issues and dangers in using web 2.0 applications. This session provided a sober contrast to some of the earlier sessions on web 2.0 technologies, and was a good reminder to us all of the importance of keeping within the law, even on the web.

Neil Richards was up next talking up for KM. This was a good overview of technology and the specific applications for KM in law firms. Neil has a real feel for the legal market, and I think gave us all a much better understanding of what SharePoint can do for our firms. Unfortunately, the BIALL Blog didn't make it to the last session of the day - Jonathan Brewer from LexisNexis discussing new legal technologies. We were caught up downstairs with the seemingly endless raffle winners! For those who did make it, please let us know how it went!

This years conference was a great event, with lots of fantastic speakers, and I'm sure all of the attendees had a great time. Many thanks to all of the speakers for giving up their time to give us all such a great and informative conference.