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.

As discussions over the price increases levied by LexisNexis (formerly Butterworths – I suppose we will eventually get used to the new branding and stop pining for our old friend!) on certain of their electronic products continues, it is perhaps fitting that our leading article in this issue is a comparihson of the online services offered by LexisNexis and Westlaw UK. Paul Norman is particularly well-suited to writing it, as he has many years experience of using and teaching both services within the academic environment, from which perspective his article is written. He has comprehensively covered all aspects of the services from coverage, through searching and documentation, to customer support. His article also ties in nicely with the imminent launch of the Online Register of Electronic Resources by the Association.

This issue of LIM is particularly special as it marks our move to Cambridge University Press, after many years with Sweet & Maxwell. The Editorial Board is delighted with the change and we are looking forward to a long and happy working relationship with the team at CUP. Your Editor's life should be made much simpler, as all the production processes will be managed at CUP, so there will be no more chasing up of recalcitrant printers and typesetters, nor of trying to (largely unsuccessfully) solicit advertising, as we will have our very own advertising and marketing person at CUP and all production processes are carried on within the company.

Following on from the Editorial in the Summer issue of the journal, where we looked forward to a discussion on publisher's pricing practices, the Publishers' Panel duly took place at the Edinburgh Conference. The AALL Guide to Fair Practices for Legal Publishers was explained to us by Tory Trotta, incoming President of AALL. Unfortunately, the issue of pricing is not included in the Guide as AALL believe it is an area in which AALL should not intervene, as long as publishers are behaving in a fair and legal manner. The draft BIALL Code was also discussed and there were some interesting contributions from the floor on how relations with publishers could be improved, but the thorny subject of pricing was not given an airing.

Lexis and Westlaw are the biggest names in subscription legal database provision, and have been settled here in the UK long enough to be the subject of a little comparative critical examination. I hope to provide this in what follows, with the caveat that my experience is of academic subscriptions, which may vary in content from their commercial counterparts. I do have the advantage of access to the respective American academic versions, so that some comparisons can also be made in that direction.

Sara Berry, Head of Information Sourcing at Clifford Chance, recounts her experiences of moving her library from the City of London to Canary Wharf – the article contains a useful checklist of items to consider.

In a previous life I was a yuppie. Double breasted suit, briefcase and a state-of-the-art-library with views across the harbour from the top floor of a glass tower in downtown Auckland. I worked hard and played even harder. My time was charged in ten minute units and I can still remember the middle initial of every partner in the firm. So how on earth did I end up trading my well polished lace-ups for flip flops and the beloved kiwi Sauvignon Blanc for a dirty brown liquid called kava?

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

This article presents the key findings of the research I carried out in the summer of 2002 for the final year dissertation project of the MSc in Information and Library Management at Bristol University

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

The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 will be fully implemented by January 2005 having received Royal Assent in April 2002. The Act will introduce important new rights for all to access information held by Scottish public authorities. This article by John McNairney sets out the key provisions of the Act and the mechanisms supporting the delivery of open government in Scotland.

So there I am, late summer of 1986, in Toronto with a still-damp Master's Degree in Information and Library Science from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and I'm looking for a job. Not just any job. Nope, a job in Bermuda. Why? Well, it happens to be home and I've got this five year plan that says do five years in Canada with the new husband and get finished with education for both of us and find a job in Bermuda. So it's time to do just that. I've had quite enough, thank you, of the Frozen North, slipping and sliding on the roads and the sidewalks and winter is fast approaching yet again. Now where's that job?

Alan Fraser of the Scottish Executive's 21st Century Government Unit explains how they are helping the public sector in Scotland to modernise its service provision to embrace electronic delivery methods, data sharing and development of best practices, all to improve the ordinary citizens' access to information.

The need to monitor competitor activity and anticipate competitive actions is a standard activity for most businesses. In order to succeed and grow, firms need to understand what rival firms are doing, and furthermore what is happening in the overall business environment. However unlike a manufacturing company, or a high-street retailer, or indeed many other businesses, obtaining intelligence on competitors is not so easy for professional service firms.

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

Before 1905 there were no immigration laws in the UK. The first system of appeals in immigration cases was introduced by the Immigration Appeals Act 1969. Since then it has been subject to numerous changes. A full right of appeal to an adjudicator in asylum cases was first created by the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993. Immigration law is governed by the Immigration Act 1971, with changes made by Immigration Acts in 1993, 1996, 1999, and most recently with the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002.

The journal PLC was a worthy winner of the BIALL Serials Award for 2003. PLC, which has been regularly nominated for the award by BIALL members, was in competition with almost a dozen other journals. The adjudication panel agreed that PLC is a journal which has attained excellence in quality, innovation and originality, especially in its presentation of information, as a print journal. It has also successfully meshed print with online to produce a truly new era product.

Elsewhere in this journal Arthur Weiss's review of competitive intelligence for legal professionals is careful to point out that CI is a lawful and ethical process. It is not, as some senior managers still believe, a cloak-and-dagger shady activity carried out by unscrupulous managers in the FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), hi-tech or pharmaceutical sectors.

Stephen Morrall and Charles Urquhart of Middleton Potts explain the meanings of “bullying” and “harassment”, discuss criminal, civil and contractual liability issues, recent and forthcoming legislation and offer advice on what organisations can do to minimise such activities at work.

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