The British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) carried out a survey of BIALL members during May 2020 in order to gain a view, at a point in time, of the impact of Covid-19.1 National lockdowns in both the United Kingdom and Ireland had come into force in March 2020. The survey was a way of gauging how the legal information community was responding to the challenges and changing circumstances brought about as a result of the pandemic. This brief introduction by Karen Brown, President of BIALL, sets the scene for the results of the survey which appear in the pages that follow.2

The author of this article Margaret Clay looks back on her long tenure as Librarian at the Inner Temple, one of the four Inns of Court libraries serving barristers, judiciary, and students on the Bar Course. She recalls the selection process she experienced and proceeds to discuss the introduction of automation to the Library, a high priority in the early days. She explains the various relocations of parts of the Library's print collection (made necessary by periodic changes in the priorities of the parent organisation) and traces the development of electronic services: from CD-ROM databases to web-based services and onward to social media. She outlines the initiatives in reader services and other areas entered upon during her tenure and, in conclusion, looks forward to the future of the information service she was instrumental in setting up. Margaret retired in 2020.*

Bennett Graff, senior acquisitions editor at Gale, reviews the origins and current composition of The Making of Modern Law, a series of individual collections of digitized primary sources devoted to legal history. This overview explores the rationale behind the development of these collections and the research needs that they meet.

In 2019 the Bar of Ireland Law Library launched an online exhibition detailing the first one hundred years of women in the law in Ireland and the first one hundred women called to the Irish Bar. The online exhibition coincided with the centenary celebrations of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 and a physical exhibition curated in collaboration with the Honorable Society of Kings Inns and the Law Society of Ireland. This article by Vanessa Curley and Sarah Foley explores the background to how Law Library staff became involved in creating historical exhibitions, the development of a digital archive of The Bar of Ireland and curating online exhibitions to complement this. It will also discuss the benefits of such activities to the Law Library service and the wider Bar of Ireland.

In this article Beth Flerlage and Renae Satterley reflect on the library staffs’ experience of using Agile project management techniques and cloud-based tools to restructure resources at Middle Temple Library.

Middle Temple Library has recently significantly enriched its portfolio of electronic resources. This situation was caused not only by the Covid-19 crisis, which certainly accelerated its efforts in this field, but also by the changing demands and habits of the Inn's members. The library specialises in arbitration and competition law, so a decision was taken to try two new digital platforms and, as Lenka Geidt writes, to share their experiences in the course of this article.