This is very much a personal opinion on the potential demise of the traditional library (which some would argue has already gone). My aim was to reassure library and information professionals that there is a role left for our profession in the world of lawyers who are able to access information at their desks; a world which includes professional support lawyers and know how databases. This is no place for the fainthearted, and especially not for the stereotypical librarian – if such a creature exists. This article will only scratch the surface of some issues, so I welcome comments, feedback and downright disagreement – sdoe@sidley.com

The title of the legislation commonly referred to as the USA PATRIOT Act is in fact an acronym: the full name of this 342-page act is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, passed on 26 October 2001. It amends more than 15 federal statutes covering criminal procedure, computer fraud and abuse, foreign intelligence, wiretapping and the privacy of student records. The USA PATRIOT legislation was introduced by Attorney-General John Ashcroft who sought to increase the powers to fight terrorism following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington DC. Some concern was expressed at the lack of public debate when the legislation was introduced: the Act was passed in around six weeks.

In May 2003, I had the task of distributing the notice of Willi Steiner's death to colleagues, which is reproduced below. On 27 May an obituary appeared in the Times written by Willi's brother Francis. This article is an opportunity to mark Willi's passing with a substantial account of his career and contribution to the profession of law librarianship and to the process of research and scholarship in law. I would like to thank David Wills, Squire Law Librarian, and Paul Norman of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library for their assistance.

Over the last six months there have been a number of developments in legal information provision. The major publishers have released new services, and have updated existing products. As a busy information professional it can be difficult to keep up to date with all the changes, and there is not always time to evaluate the benefits of one service over another.

When we examine the implications of US and UK governmental responses to the events of 9/11 for the privacy rights of their citizens, we have to begin from the understanding that even prior to 9/11 there were relatively few congruencies between the two legal systems. While neither country has an explicit constitutional right to privacy, in the US the Supreme Court decided in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) that for many of the other constitutional rights to be meaningful, there had to be at least an implicit right to privacy derivable from the Constitution. In contrast, the concept of a right of personal privacy, to protect the individual from third parties generally, or from government in particular, is one which, until recently, has been largely alien to the law of the United Kingdom. Unlike the situation in the United States, the judiciary in the UK has consistently declined to provide specific sectoral privacy rights, via the common law, that might eventually be developed into a general right of privacy. Legislative attempts to create such a general right have met with an equal lack of enthusiasm. Where specific sectoral statutory protections of privacy have been adopted by the UK Parliament they have, almost without exception, come about as a result of pressures at an international level, not the least as a result of actions, or threats of actions, under the European Convention on Human Rights, or as a result of economic requirements consequent upon the UK's membership of the EU.

I first met Willi Steiner in 1960 when I joined the library staff of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, where he was a frequent visitor in his capacity as Assistant Editor of the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals. He was extremely short-sighted and my first view of him was in the slightly undignified posture he had to adopt to read titles on the bottom shelves. But one of his many endearing attributes was that he never stood on his dignity and he would have been highly amused if he had caught his reflection in a mirror. Nor did he ever complain about his handicap beyond the very occasional rueful comment when he sometimes had to guess who had spoken to him. He did not allow it to deflect him from his many scholarly pursuits and personal interests and, happily, towards the end of his career, his sight was so much improved by an operation to his eyes that he only required spectacles for reading.

Disability discrimination law is a fast evolving area of the law in England and Wales. This article sets out the basic concepts of what constitutes a “disability”, what constitutes “discrimination” and some of the factors that tribunals, employees and employers should consider in a disability discrimination dispute.

William A.F.P. Steiner, one of the founding editors of the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals has died after a long illness. Willi (always Willi, never William or Dr. Steiner) had received his diplomate from Vienna shortly before he emigrated to England in 1938; he received a Masters degree from Cambridge and a Master of Laws degree from the University of London. He was a barrister of Gray's Inn, but his primary interests were bibliography and the organization of knowledge and information, and he almost immediately embarked on endeavours as a librarian and editor. His first positions were as assistant librarian at the London School of Economics, 1946–1958, and then the Squire Law Library at Cambridge, 1959–1968. In 1968 he returned to London as the Librarian of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, also serving as the Secretary of the Institute from 1968 to 1971. In 1984 he returned to Cambridge, where he had continued to live since 1959, but only to a semi-retirement of consulting, teaching and writing.

The subject of this article is not strictly limited to law librarianship but I do feel that it is a topic that a large number of us are exposed to and for which I myself initially had little guidance. In the hard financial climate that we have been experiencing recently, negotiating good contract renewals has become a vital skill for any legal information professional.

Bore da. Diolch am fy nghyflwyno mewn ffordd mon garrdeig. A gai hefyd ddiolch i ch Cymdeithias am fy nghwahodd i chwarae rhan yn eich cenhadledd blynyddol yma ym mrhif ddinas Cymru. Ar ran y Cynulliad Cenedlaethol, Croes i Gymru.

Good morning. Thank you for your introduction Madam Chairman. On behalf of the national Assembly for Wales, it is my considerable pleasure to welcome your annual conference to Wales and to its capital city, Cardiff.

E-government first came on the scene for local authorities in 1999 with the publication of the White Paper Modernising Government by the Cabinet Office. The Government of the time was persuaded that, due to the substantial and high publicity advances in online and dot.com businesses, public services in general and local government functions in particular would have to be capable of being delivered technologically. If this was not to be the case, then the Government expected a backlash from those who could buy goods online, download music from Internet sites and post messages on bulletin boards but who could not report a fault, make a complaint or pay their council tax in a similar way. Ironically, during the intervening years, the business world has seen the dot.com crash and many of the young upstart businesses which appeared on the scene around that time have either gone bust or been swallowed up by more traditional businesses that approached the electronic agenda much more slowly and cautiously. This means that one of the main drivers to have e-government at all, has substantially reduced in its ferocity.

A campaign to bring the law up-to-date with the current world of publishing has been led by the British Library, on behalf of all the legal deposit libraries and the publisher trade bodies. If the move is successful, new generic legislation will ensure that non-print formats are included within legal deposit – allowing UK businesses and education to benefit from access to the widest possible collections of research material, now and in the future.

One of the most satisfying aspects of editing a magazine such as Managing Information, is the gathering together of expertise to help people improve their abilities and the services they provide and to facilitate, through raised awareness and discussion, the development of solutions to issues. Just such an opportunity has presented itself over the past year in the form of the imminent implementation of EU Directive 29/2001.

The Lawpaths project >http://library.kent.ac.uk/library/lawpaths/< is a project to provide a resource bank of customisable legal information skills materials, based on best practice. It is funded by the JISC over three years, starting in August 2002 under the X4L (Exchange for Learning) programme. The project partners are the University of Kent, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and the UK Centre for Legal Education, in collaboration with the University of Bristol, Cardiff University and the Institute for Learning & Research Technology

In Northern Ireland there has been a lot of interesting experience of devolution (although rather less of lawmaking, especially recently). Indeed, the experience of devolution in Northern Ireland is greater than elsewhere in the United Kingdom as this present (interrupted) phase is the third version that has taken place. Such a history, involving as it does not just various failures but also a fifty year record of relative stability might suggest that Northern Ireland has particular lessons to offer to the devolution process that the UK has experienced since 1998.

By the Spring of this year, if all goes to plan, there will be changes to our current laws on copyright. EC Directive 2001/29/EC on the Harmonisation of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in the Information Society is soon to be implemented into legislation in all Member States. This article describes the reasons behind the changes, what the changes are and how they affect the library and information sector.

The closest thing we in the United States have to what the British and Canadians call devolution is federalism: the sharing of power between the states and the federal government.