TRG Screen's Global Director of Marketing Roel Mels talks LIM through ResearchMonitor, a tool that allows legal information professionals and lawyers to keep track of and manage their subscriptions.

In this article, based on his presentation at the BIALL Annual Conference in July 2022, the author Greg Bennett, a law librarian, discusses the insights he gained by becoming a student of law, and so, a user of a law library.

Goldsmiths, University of London, started teaching LLBs in Law in 2019/2020. Greg Bennett was hired in 2018 to be the subject librarian for law, and to stock the library before teaching commenced. In this article, based on his presentation at the BIALL Online Annual Conference in June 2021, the author will discuss his decision-making and selection processes regarding his choices about what to include, and what not to include in the collection.

This paper, which was written by Rona Blair, is drawn from her presentation at the 2015 BIALL Annual Conference. The article looks at the challenges of working in a geographically dispersed team and how to overcome these challenges using pragmatic and workable procedures.

Much has been written and discussed about the outsourcing of library staff. In the following article, Dunstan Speight, Library Manager at Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP, looks at the role of in-house information teams. Although written from the perspective of the manager of a team of researchers in a City law firm, the author hopes that elements of his experience will have a relevance to other sectors and team structures.

Loyita Worley outlines recent developments among law firms where outsourcing has been embraced in relation to their library, information and knowledge functions and services. She defines the terms and themes of the subject – outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring and onshoring – and offers some thoughts for the future of legal information services in the commercial sector.

Fiona Fogden discusses how negotiation skills can be applied within the information service. She uses a case-study, which involves evaluating the renewal of a news subscription service and the importance of considering which people may be involved in that negotiation, to illustrate her advice.

In the first in our series of very short articles devoted to practical library and information management issues, Dean Mason from Salans provides helpful advice on how to set up a business continuity plan for your information service.

In this very practical and useful Checklist, Anne Coles and Davina Gifford of LG guide us through the steps involved in moving a corporate library to a new building, whilst at the same time re-branding the information service. They highlight the most important issues to consider at the pre-planning and planning stages; the move itself and after the move. The most important message is not to enter unwinnable battles and to prepare as thoroughly as possible.