‘Classification, then, is a tool for very simple but infinitely important purposes. Its whole object is to secure an order which will be useful to readers and to those who seek information with the smallest complication of search or other effort. It is a technique designed to expedite the full use of the knowledge stored in books and other material housed in the collection.’ (Maltby, 1975). Rita Marcella expounds her view of the importance of subject classification.

Following the intense interest generated within the legal information profession by the acquisition of Lawtel announced by Sweet & Maxwell on August 2, 2002, the Editorial Board asked Wendy Beecham to grant us an interview to enable her to communicate to us the rationale behind the takeover. Wendy very kindly agreed to speak to me and the following is a report of our conversation, which covered not just Lawtel, but also included a follow-up to the interview Wendy gave to Laurence Eastham shortly after she became Managing Director of Sweet & Maxwell in I 999, and published in the Law Librarian.

I'd like to begin with a voyage round my grandfather. Captain Robert Owen was a native of Liverpool. He lived for most of his life not five miles from where we're gathered now. He was a sea captain and he worked for the Harrison Line, a cargo firm trading out of Liverpool to West Africa and America. One of his early commands, from 1899 to 1906, was the cargo vessel Logician. He rose eventually to be commodore captain of the line - and this wasn't because of what he could do, but because of what he knew.

Elizabeth Mary Moys, known to all her colleagues as Betty, was born on 26 June 1928 at Wickford, Essex. She was brought up in Kent where she spent most of her life when in the UK. She attended Chislehurst County Grammar School then went on to Queen Mary College, London, to read English and took a BA (Hons) degree in 1949. Her first job was in Crayford Branch of Kent County Library Service from 1949–50. After library school in 1950–51 (Northwestern Polytechnic School of Librarianship, where she was one of the leading spirits in starting a School of Librarian-ship Students' Association), Betty became reference librarian at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1951.

Uttering the phrase knowledge management (KM) evokes all sorts of facial expressions in different audiences ranging from bewilderment, confusion and non-chalance through to blatant boredom. As an independent consultant working in this area, I am particularly attuned to these facial expressions when I address I this subject. I prefer my clients to be in the ‘bewildered’ or ‘confused’ state as this indicates they think that KM could be important to them but they are not sure how it could impact their businesses. Many also have an underlying enthusiasm for the topic as there is still a lot of buzz and talk about the ‘knowledge economy’. Those in the ‘non-chalant’ and ‘bored’ categories are much harder to turn around as they have probably ‘already tried knowledge management and it didn’t work. Their initial enthusiasm has turned to cynicism, they do not like being told they got it wrong but they are looking for ways to recoup their investment of both time and money.

CEM: Could you give us some background information on the Lawtel service, please?

I recently found myself in the ‘enviable’ position of purchasing a library management system. The whole process gave me the chance to review the current classification scheme. The classification used was a ‘home made’ scheme based on broad legal topics. While the scheme was in itself fine, developments in the law meant that a significant number of areas were no longer sufficient. Coupled with the rapid growth in the firm's specialisms in the past few years, the classification scheme no longer served the needs of the library.

The Eversheds Communities project's aim is to put together an integrated online mix of Eversheds’ internal commentary and know-how, combin-ed with leading external commercial information content, and to make this combined service available to the firm's clients for an agreed fee.

The ancient clusters of barristers’ chambers situated in and around London's Inns of Court are home to a growing number of law librarians. I first joined their ranks in December 1996, when I was offered a few hours work per week for a leading civil set on a freelance basis, performing mainly loose leafing. I accepted out of curiosity to learn exactly what went on in the enigmatic world of counsel's chambers, which was so often referred to in solicitors firms where I had previously worked.

In early 2002, Legal Week, in conjunction with PA Consulting Group, published a survey of how the major law firms in the UK are using IT as a management and competitive weapon. The survey, targeted at both managing partners and IT directors of the top 100 law firms in the UK, was carried out during the latter part of 2001. An article highlighting the main results of the survey was published in Legal IT (www.legalit.net) and reported that law firms currently spend between 2% and 10% of their turnover on IT each year, the average being 5.5%. Client portal and knowledge management (KM) are the two areas of greatest activity in the near future (cited by 27% and 30% of the survey sample respectively).

The title of James Shearer's article makes his aim and ambit clear. James Shearer regularly teaches day courses on cataloguing for Aslib, and has recently provided bespoke courses for the London Library and the Library of the European Commission. He is an information consultant and lecturer in information management at the University. With Alan R. Thomas he co-edited Cataloguing and classification: trends, transformations, teaching and training (Haworth Press, 1997). Examples of cataloguingc referred to in the text appear on pp. 14 to 17.

So Lawtel has become part of the ever-growing empire that is Sweet & Maxwell. Their duopoly with Butterworths extends and the poor librarian has one less independent place to go to for information. But the question is, how will this affect us in our daily lives? Will we see this very good service swallowed up and become part of Westlaw or will it remain functioning independently?

“I am an indexer” as the answer to the usual occupation enquiry is pretty much guaranteed to stop a conversation stone dead. It is much easier to say ‘librarian’, which was on my passport for 20 years, or even ‘information scientist’, which I was trained to be. Sometimes I get quite defiant. I am an indexer, and yes a human actually does prepare those pages at the back of books, and no, it is not all done by computer.

Taxonomies are becoming trendy! What do you, as a legal information professional, need to know about them? Do you already know a good deal because they appeared under the guise of classification schemes when you were studying librarianship or information science? In this article an attempt will be made to explain in comprehensible terms the place of taxonomies in current thinking about information retrieval, and in particular their relevance to your work as a legal information manager.

When news first arrived in my e-mail from a member of Lis-Law that Lawtel had been taken over by Sweet and Maxwell, I was concerned because I felt that one of our most useful services would be absorbed into the large corporate publisher's long list of products.

This article from Gillian Sands looks at the cat and class skills taught on information studies courses and the use these skills are to new legal information professionals. The article is based on the opinions of nine new legal information professionals from both academic and law firm libraries.