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 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.

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.

Philippa Smith gives a brief introduction to the records of the City of London livery companies held by the Manuscripts Section of Guildhall Library.

This new service won the Halsbury's Award for the Best Legal Information Service – Non-Commercial Sector at the recent BIALL Conference in Dublin. Chris Holland explains the background to the project and outlines plans for its future development.

This is an edited version of the presentation given by Peter Clinch to the 40th BIALL Annual Study Conference held in Dublin in 2008. It helps to set in context the surveys he conducted on behalf of the Society of Legal Scholars. The results of one of the surveys are reported as part of the Annual Academic Law Library Survey elsewhere in this issue.

This is the latest report analysing the results of the BIALL and Society of Legal Scholars Survey. It has been written by Peter Clinch, Senior Subject Librarian for Law, Cardiff University

This article by David Gee gives an overview of the current copyright regime in this country, from the perspective of both rights-owners and librarians. It considers the issues raised by the digital copyright regime and the latest official developments in this area.

This is another contribution by Lesley Dingle to an expanding audio and photographic archive, which focuses on the careers of prominent academics who have a long affiliation with the Faculty of Law at Cambridge University.

This article by Michael Saporito, Access Services Librarian at the Boston Social Law Library, discusses the new co-operation scheme which has been put together by two leading law libraries to exploit their document delivery schemes for the mutual benefit of their clients.