Three academic and one law firm librarian, Susan Boyle, Virginia Conrick, Pattie Punch, and Ann O'Sullivan collaborated to create a ‘Lawyering Toolkit’. It was devised to support learners on the legal lifecycle from higher education to the corporate sphere and beyond. Arranged by skills level, it was imagineered via the online BIALL Irish Group meetings during the Covid pandemic. Learning steps were visually scaffolded in LibGuides to build a quick reference platform. This article describes how the Toolkit proof-of-concept developed through experiential reflection and shared discussion. It tracks the construction of a prototype to presentation at BIALL Conference 2022 and incorporates feedback from the conference and the BIALL Irish Group. It is envisaged that the Lawyering Toolkit will ensure a more collaborative and consistent approach to legal information literacy in the Republic of Ireland.

This issue of LIM has a theme of Scottish legal information and David Hart the highly respected and long-standing (ex) Scottish law librarian, kindly agreed to talk to the Editor about his long career on law librarianship and his involvement with BIALL

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.

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.

Sarah Spells provides information about the SOAS Library, including details of the law collection, services offered, and the challenges faced when dealing with queries about Asian, African and Middle Eastern legal materials.

Muriel Anderson, former Librarian of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, died peacefully on the morning of 25 June 2006. Staff at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, where she spent much of her career, learned the sad news the next day and a brief notice was issued to the professional community.