IALS Library News Headlines - July 2006

The annual IALS Library user survey was undertaken as usual in March this year. The results of the survey were very positive and will be very helpful for future service planning. The summary results are published on the IALS website at: http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/satisfaction_survey_results_2006.htm

The 2006 LexisNexis Award for Academic Legal Information Professional of the Year was presented to Paul Norman, Reference & Online Services Librarian at IALS Library in a ceremony to honour the work and achievements of the UK's top law librarians at the Annual Dinner of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians in Brighton in June. http://www.biall.org.uk/Home.asp?id=i95

Uma Narayan, Librarian of the High Court in Mumbai, completed her three-month Commonwealth Professional Fellowship and IALS Visiting Fellowship in Law Librarianship Fellowship at the end of March 2006. She contributed to the Indian section of SOSIG, reviewed the holdings of Indian law in the Library, wrote a guide to Indian law resources, and gave a presentation to staff. Uma will be the local organizer for the 2007 conference of the International Association of Law Libraries.

Intute - the new service from the Resource Discovery Network - was launched in June 2006. IALS is working with University of Bristol as section editors for Intute: Law, which builds on their work to create the SOSIG Law internet gateway. http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/law/

Under a continuing collaborative agreement between IALS Library and the British Library, print holdings of Belgian and Italian official gazettes were transferred to the British Library to complete sets held there. This is a step towards the creation of a distributed national collection of this primary resource. An article describing the work appeared in SCONUL Focus no.36, available at http://www.sconul.ac.uk/pubs_stats/newsletter/36/13.pdf

Wireless pilot project at IALS. A project is under way to provide wireless Internet access in the Institute's Library, teaching and public areas. The service is planned for the new academic session. The project is being funded by the Vice Chancellor's Development Fund as a pilot leading to WiFi installations in other libraries of ULRLS and Institutes of the School

In February 2006 Katherine Read undertook a CILIP sponsored visit to a range of academic and law libraries in Hamburg, Berlin and Leipzig. The focus of the visit was to look at ways in which library staff were involved in presenting materials on the Internet. An article about the visit will be published in Legal Information Management in September 2006.

Gerry Power, Access Librarian at IALS, visited the University of Jos in Nigeria for 2 weeks during April 2006. to present two workshops: "Using the Internet as a Research and Teaching Tool for Academics, Lawyers and Judges". The workshops were organised by the Faculty of Law, University of Jos, in partnership with the Carnegie Foundation. The workshops were well attended and attracted lecturers from several Nigerian universities, members of the legal profession, and postgraduate students.

Gerry Power presented a paper on the policy background to workplace learning at a parallel session of the Annual Study Conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) in June 2006 in Brighton. The paper will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Legal Information Management, the journal of BIALL.

Paul Norman, Reference & Online Services Librarian at IALS Library, gave a presentation on free Internet sources of U.S. case law at the Seminar preceding the Annual Conference of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians in Brighton in June 2006.

Jules Winterton, IALS Librarian and Associate Director, gave a paper on 'The significance of internationalisation - trends and challenges' or 'Internationaliseringens betidnyng - tendenser i udviklingen af den internationale juridiske biblioteksverden - øget behov for samarbejde of netværk globalt' at the meeting of the Nordic Law Librarians' Group in Copenhagen in June 2006.

The Academic Services team at IALS Library have written online tutorials to the following services: BAILII, Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals, the Justis databases, and the United Nations Treaty Collection. The tutorials are written using INFORMS software and are available on the IALS website, http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/eservice/elibrary.htm . More tutorials are in preparation and will be available in Autumn 2006.

The 18-month Series Book Automation Project which added the Library's detailed serial holding records to the online catalogue was completed successfully in March 2006. Readers can access a complete summary of all volumes of journals, law reports and legislation held by the Library.

IALS Library now subscribes to LexisNexisJurisClasseur, a major French electronic legal resource, http://ials.sas.ac.uk/library/eservice/elibrary.htm

Lesley Young, Information Resources Manager, participated in the London Universities Purchasing Consortium tender procedure to select library serial suppliers.

Jules Winterton was a VIP guest at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries in St Louis, Missouri in July 2006.

In June 2006 IALS learned the sad news of the death of Muriel Anderson. Muriel was the Librarian of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies from 1982 until 1991, when she retired. She had joined the library in 1960 and played a major role in the management of the library as its Deputy Librarian for many years before her appointment as Librarian. She had formerly been Librarian of the Incorporated Law Society of Northern Ireland. Muriel was a Vice President of the International Association of Law Libraries from 1983 to 1986 and Chair of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians for 1988/89. She had life membership of BIALL conferred on her by the Association for her outstanding and distinguished service.