In this article Alan Wheeler advocates for academic librarians to employ the principles of autoethnography and storytelling within their practice, as a tactic for student engagement. As a librarian and researcher operating within Higher Education (HE), Alan has always illustrated his practice with personal accounts of how to operate effectively as a student. Here, he proposes that librarians in academia embrace the autoethnographic principles of vulnerability, uncertainty and subjectivity to explore their position within HE, but also as a teaching tool.

The following article began life as a ten-minute presentation titled ‘Building student engagement brick by brick; using Lego® Serious Play® to explore subject engagement in HE’, presented at BIALL's 2020 virtual conference on 12 June 2020. Since 2016 I have been incorporating Lego® Serious Play® (LSP) within my practice as an academic librarian at Middlesex University. This article will explore how I have embedded LSP into workshops with students and staff, the tactics employed to gain acceptance for using LSP within academic settings and offering some tentative predictions on whether playful approaches will be successful in the current Higher Education (HE) landscape, dominated as we currently are by virtual learning and screen technologies.

There is no doubt that the ‘Google Generation’ or ‘Digital Natives’ are entering legal education with a very different set of skills than those who came before them. In this article Daniel Bates examines the precise nature of the skillset of those beginning their legal careers, and considers his experiences teaching research skills to law students at the University of Cambridge for over a decade. Furthermore, he considers how students' educational and cultural background in the areas of research and information literacy should inform the teaching of legal skills.

Angela Carritt of the Bodleian Law Library gave a paper at the 38th Annual BIALL Study Conference in Sheffield in June 2007. She discusses Oxford University's Legal Research Skills Programme (LRSP), looking at its content, methodology and effectiveness. She also looks at the programme as an example of a stand-alone skills course and asks whether such courses can be effective. Additionally, she discusses students' use of online resources and suggests that they have developed computer based study strategies which make the use of print resources inconvenient. The paper draws on research by Sandra Meredith into students' expectations and experiences of the LRSP and how they use their learning after the classes.

This article by Sarah Batts discusses findings from a dissertation research project investigating LPC and BVC students' use of resources in supporting their legal research. Although there are many similarities between the two cohorts in the tasks they find difficult, or their use of a virtual learning environment, there are also key differences in the sources of help they would turn to first to look for answers to problems. This understanding of the different emphasis that students place on different resources provokes a number of questions which, if addressed, could help promote a positive library experience for students.

This article by Maria Mawson, Natasha Semmens and Mark Taylor, is based on a paper given at the 38th BIALL Annual Study Conference held in Sheffield in June 2007 and describes a new partnership between colleagues from the Library and the School of Law at the University of Sheffield, which has led to the development of an innovative new undergraduate foundation module in law. It begins by describing the situation which existed before the project. Next, two key changes which provided the impetus for the new collaboration are described. Finally, key elements of the new foundation module are discussed.