In this analysis of the future of our profession, Barbara Tearle starts by looking at the past to see how much the world of legal information has evolved and changed. She considers the nature of the profession today and then identifies key factors which she believes will be of importance in the future, including the impact of globalisation; the potential changes to the legal profession; technology; developments in legal education; increasing commercialisation and changes to the law itself.

This article, by Daniel Hayter of Bloomberg Law, is based on a series of seminars presented to legal information professionals during 2007–2008. It includes a guide to corporate finance and methods of raising money in the capital markets. The author also describes the topical area of mortgage-backed securities.

Jonathan Sims looks at the way the British Library has been redefining its role in light of the changing environment of society's information revolution. An overview of challenges from the information society and the institutional complex is followed by descriptions of how the Library is responding through content strategy and programmes for digitisation, digital preservation and web archiving. A brief look is also taken at the new social science strategy and a new content specialist role for law and socio-legal studies.

Ruth Bird considers how the facilities and services at the Bodleian Law Library will evolve in the 21st Century given its status as a member library of the Copyright Deposit Scheme, which means that whilst other libraries are shrinking their paper collections, it is still expanding them.

In his paper given at the 38th BIALL Annual Study Conference, Derek Law considers the role of libraries and teaching, in particular academic libraries, in the new Web 2.0 world. He considers the needs of the new generation of “digital natives” in terms of the traditional library and questions whether it still has a role to fulfil. He concludes that academic librarians must become fully involved in the digital revolution and embrace new methods of developing their collections.

The purpose of this article, by Stephanie Biggs of Kirkland & Ellis International LLP, is to give an introduction to private equity. The article provides a brief overview of the industry, then looks in more detail at the two key processes in which private equity lawyers are involved: fundraising and doing deals. The author also looks at the resources available for researching private equity and provides a glossary of commonly used terms.

The purpose of this article by Peter Savage of Cobbetts is to give a brief introduction to the methods used by companies to raise money by both debt and equity financing methods, primarily on the public markets in the City of London, and to set the background to the involvement of lawyers in the process.

This article by Alvin M. Podboy of Baker Hostetler in Cleveland, Ohio, examines the future of 21st Century law librarianship from an American perspective. It reviews developing legal information trends as they affect our profession. The article melds our historical and philosophic law library foundation to our continuing professional evolution.

Nicola Wakefield and Emily Allbon are academic law librarians. They offer their thoughts on the future that all academic law librarians may face as we move further into the 21st Century. They look at the key issues and examine possibilities for the future role of law librarians, considering how changes in technology, library spaces, study habits and the pressures of time and funding could affect us as a profession.

Janice Edwards of Maclay Murray & Spens provides a brief guide to sources of both primary and secondary company information.

This article by Janice Clarke of Holman Fenwick Willan covers the basic materials required for a shipping law library (both hard copy and online) and then addresses how to answer some of the queries most frequently received by the shipping law librarian. The emphasis is on specialised sources.

Peter Lake is the Managing Director of Sweet & Maxwell, a Thomson company. As part of our feature on law librarianship and legal information in the 21st Century, we arranged to interview him to ascertain his views both on the future of legal publishing and on how Sweet & Maxwell are faring in the early part of the century.

John Furlong of Matheson, Ormsby Prentice LLP briefly describes the services provided by the Companies Registration Office.

Lesley Young analyses how the acquisitions process has altered in an academic law library with a huge international collection of both hard copy and electronic resources, following the increasing introduction and use of electronic sources of legal information.

Hilary Smith describes the work of Kennedys, an international law firm specialising in insurance litigation, and the information sources its lawyers rely on. Written with a view, firstly, to provide guidance to legal information professionals who may be unfamiliar with insurance materials and, secondly, to generate interest amongst the legal information profession about the work of insurance litigation firms. Included are explanations of different types of insurance and common terminology used by insurance litigation lawyers.