Hurrah! Law librarians or rather “Legal Information Managers”, “Knowledge Managers” and “Directors of Information Services”, have at last received a good press from no less than our old friends Sweet & Maxwell, with subsequent coverage in The Times. It seems that they have conducted a survey of library and information services within the top 100 law firms and have discovered that the position and prospects of law librarians have improved greatly over the last few years and particularly since the advent of Knowledge Management, with over twenty per cent of us now reporting either directly to the Managing Partner or sitting on the management board. This is very good news for us professionally and makes a welcome change from the not too distant past when redundancies were the order of the day.

Paper presented to the 35th BIALL Annual Study Conference in Edinburgh, June 2004 by Adrian Dale.

Paper presented to the 35th BIALL Annual Study Conference in Edinburgh, June 2004 by Sharon Markless.

Paper presented to the 35th BIALL Annual Study Conference in Edinburgh, June 2004 by Catherine Hearn.

Paper presented to the 35th BIALL Annual Study Conference in Edinburgh, June 2004 by Valerie Stevenson.

Paper presented to the 35th BIALL Annual Study Conference in Edinburgh, June 2004 by Marianne Barber.

As Bob Dylan says, times they are a-changing. This theme was central to the weekend in the fair city of Edinburgh, hosts of the 35th Annual BIALL Conference. To be honest I was not sure what to expect from a law librarianship conference. The first manifestation of this was in packing for the event where I could not decide between a formal or a somewhat dressed down approach to my sartorial collection. I have been to conferences in other fields when at university for my first degree – namely the Classical Association Conferences and the British Association for the Advancement of Science conference. Both were pretty informal affairs (classicists having little requirement for suits generally).

Joe Swimmer gives the details on the latest application from the LexisNexis suite of knowledge management tools and technology. This software is not yet available in the UK but it is hoped that it will be released shortly.

Kingsley Martin provides an explanation of the West km software.

Amanda McKenzie writes about how information professionals can play a role in creating and implementing an effective knowledge management strategy within a law firm and how they and professional support lawyers can work together.

The development and introduction of CILIP's new Framework of Qualifications is the most significant policy initiative of the newest professional body for the library and information community, writes Marion Huckle, indeed it is arguably the most important development since the Library Association was awarded its Royal Charter in 1898. She outlines the changes and highlights the opportunities for those involved in information work in all sectors and at all levels.

This article by Cynthia Fellows describes the growth and development of Alaska's state court law libraries. To provide perspective, the first part of the article highlights the pre-statehood history of Alaska's laws and constitution. The second half describes general characteristics of court libraries in the United States, comments on U.S. case reports and computerised research, and traces the evolution of the Alaska state court libraries and the role of court librarians.

Conrad van Laer, from Maastricht University Library, and five colleagues came to Britain earlier this year and he has kindly sent us a report of their visit.

Helen Ratliffe reports on her trip to Quebec City

Compiled by Gillian Sands and Sam Weston-Smith at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies