“When digital systems remove the physical object (the book) from the archive, then all that is left is a form of rights licensing. This is intellectual property in its purest form. If books as physical objects have helped to define the library in the past, then the negotiation of licences will define the library of the future. That is why the business of licensing electronic rights is so difficult.”

No, I am not about to start an agony aunt copyright column but rather aim to select and try to resolve one or two copyright problems law librarians may have. Law librarians are no different from any other set of library and information professionals in finding copyright a difficult area. Copyright may be a minefield, as is so often said, but if one is aware of the potential problems and treads carefully, a safe path may be found through it.

There are a wide variety of reasons for you to decide to create a digital collection in your library but there are a number of questions that you should ask about the collection before you make any final decisions. This article does not attempt to provide answers to these questions, as the answers will vary greatly from library to library and depending on the different types of information being considered, but rather it highlights those issues you should consider when evaluating collections. The case study of the NSW Electoral Profiles shows how the NSW Parliamentary Library created a digital collection in response to a demand from our users for information and a need to be able to deliver it quickly across a wide area.

It was only three years ago that I was told that publishing valuable digital content on the Internet would not take off for 10 years. Today it is happening all around us with MP3 music files being swapped by our children and market research reports openly passed between business colleagues. The problem is that the intellectual property owners lose control of distribution through publishing content on the Internet – in its raw essence, an unregulated global arena – and then, more often than not, do not get paid for use of a large percentage of their content, This is perhaps the greatest reason why publishers have been unwilling to place valuable content online. Historically low-value content has taken up the vast majority of what we have been able to access online with companies hoping to recoup costs through advertising revenue. The reason is simple; conventional Internet technologies do not have any facilities for enforcing copyright, but the problem is that advertising revenues are dwindling so publishers need to find other ways of generating revenue. We can now look back with a sense of irony at straplines from major technology companies saying “Information at your finger tips”, “Information where and how you need it” as this is exactly what they are now trying to prevent so that they can keep an element of control.

If you are involved in handling information, computerised or not, which refers to identifiable living individuals, the Act probably applies to YOU.

The following is a summary (in handy menu form, and with no literary pretensions whatsoever) of the principles of the Act.The standard encyclopaedia on the subject runs to three volumes: a short article can only give an overview, and must not be taken as definitive. If you think the Act may apply, take specialist advice!

The following report outlines the activities and funding of academic law libraries in the UK and Ireland in the academic year I 99912000.The figures have been taken from the results of a postal questionnaire undertaken by Information Services staff at Cardiff University on behalf of the Society of Public Teachers of Law (SPTL).

I was appointed as a dedicated subject librarian for Law at Manchester Metropolitan University in November 1996. The University Library manages the post while the Law Department finances it, making it unique within the current staffing structure. The University supports the full range of academic and practitioner law courses over a variety of attendance modes. This accounts for a FTE of 1037 students.

The Foreign Law Guide (FLAG) Project, which aims to build a Web inventory to the holdings of foreign legal materials in university and college libraries throughout the United Kingdom, is one of about 12 collection management projects, funded by the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP). It is believed to be the only project which included within its research proposal the requirement to carry out a survey of user needs to assist in the design of the end-product of the project: the Web inventory.The purpose of the survey, as stated in the bid document, would be to:

establish the present and future requirements for foreign, comparative and international legal materials

discover what information researchers need on foreign law, how they obtain it and what they expect libraries to provide

provide essential information for decision-making on collection development and influence the production of the law Web map.

The Project Management Committee considered it important to attempt to obtain the views of as wide a range of users of foreign legal materials as possible. Attempts were made to include (a) non-lawyers working in related disciplines, (b) research support staff and PhD. students as well as academics, and (c) law librarians and information officers.

The use of intelligent technologies in legal document preparation continue to develop so as to integrate with new software and operating system developments. At the end of May products were launched by both the West Group (WestCiteLink) and LexisNexis containing smart tag features allowing integration between Windows XP (Microsoft's new operating system to be launched in the UK in October) and legal databases. As users type, smart tags activate automatically and find and identify legal citations to statutes, cases etc. Once identified a set of options can provide automatic link creation to the documents on Westlaw or LexisNexis, without the user having to leave the Word document. WestCiteLink is the result of a strategic alliance between West Group and Microsoft. As the cursor hangs over the citation the user is presented with options which can:

• find the document on Westlaw

• determine the KeyCite history

• identify citing references

• create a hyperlink to the document

• mark the cite for inclusion in a Table of Authorities.

Legal Information Management is happy to accept articles on the wide range of topics which might be of interest to BIALL members and those operating in allied fields. Although each issue focuses on a particular topic or topics, there is room within the magazine for coverage of other matters and we look to the BIALL membership and those practising in legal information or allied fields to write on any matter which concerns them or of which they have experience.