On the 6th February 2001 a group of people set out to attend the City Legal Information Group February Meeting, which was hosted by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS).
Librarian Jules Winterton bid us welcome and opened the meeting with
a talk about the founding and the background of IALS. The Institute is
part of the University of London School of Advanced Study, and was founded
in 1947. Its library is one of the largest legal research libraries in
Europe and acts a national research library in the UK.
Alice Hamilton, Legal Information Services Manager, spoke about the library's services to external users (such as law firms). Among these is a same-day document delivery service, and with the library's collection of more 240,000 items and over 2,800 current periodicals covering most UK and overseas law, they are able to answer most queries straight away.
Steve Whittle, Computing Services Librarian, spoke about the library's electronic information services and projects. IALS has its own legal information gateway service ("eagle-i"), which aims to provide guided links to English, foreign, international and comparative law materials on the Internet. Steve also mentioned the Institute's involvement in SOSIG (Social Science Information Gateway). The library is working as subject content partner with SOSIG in order to create a Law Gateway as part of the national Resource Discovery Network initiative.
After the introduction a tour was given of the library. The building was designed by Sir Denys Lasdun and is a typical example of the 1970's use of concrete. It has recently been listed, as a part of a programme to preserve buildings representing different architectural styles, which has had unfortunate implications for the library's expansion plans. On the tour, it was obvious that the library is well visited and that covering 4 floors plus basement areas, a superb collection has been built up in its 54 years.
The meeting was successfully finished with a reception, which provided the guests with the opportunity to digest the information that we had been given during the evening with wine and nibbles.
IALS contact details:
Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
17 Russell Square
London WC1B 5DR
Tel (020) 7862 5800
Fax (020) 7862 5770
Web site: http://ials.sas.ac.uk
Louise Dalsgaard is Temporary
Legal Services Librarian at Shell International Limited