Stella Dextre Clarke, our Guest Editor, provides an update on the latest developments nationally and internationally on producing standards for the creation of controlled vocabularies. After many years of inaction the advent of the worldwide web has stimulated the need for wholesale revision of existing standards and the introduction of new ones.

This article reviews the kinds of resources available to support the training of legal researchers and to guide them in their research, so that law librarians can avoid “re-inventing the wheel”. Karen Crouch places her emphasis on practical legal research. She also highlights some work in progress and possible future directions for legal learning resources and reviews some of the online tools that enable legal researchers to work more efficiently. The emphasis is on low cost resources, and those which enable additional value to be extracted from existing legal database subscriptions.

The index has been a key feature of the International Law Reports (ILR) since their inception in 1919. Apart from the individual volume indexes there have been five consolidated versions, each helping, by bringing related material together, to cast the jurisprudence in a new light. A sixth consolidation is in progress, running from Volumes 1–150. Maureen McGlashan, the indexer, describes the principles underlying the ILR indexing process and asks whether, with the Reports now available online at Justis, the index is any longer necessary. She also considers the role of the ancillary apparatus such as the Tables of Cases and Treaties.

Helen Dewar has written a very practical list of do's and dont's when implementing a law firm intranet, based on her own experience.

Andrew Coburn the 2009 Chairman of the CILIP Cataloguing and Indexing Group describes its activities, including continuing professional development, in the form of meetings and courses; work on standards and the opportunities it provides for networking.

Developing legal research skills is something that takes time and practice and can be enhanced with proper training. Marcie M. Baranich explores the various resources that HeinOnline offers to help law librarians and legal researchers develop their research skills in HeinOnline, from training guides and video tutorials to live webinars and support, together with the platforms and social media applications used to disseminate training resources, including the Wiki, Blog, YouTube channel, Facebook page, and Twitter feed.

The introduction of the Resource Description and Access cataloguing code to replace the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules is considered by Ann Chapman, the Research Officer at UKOLN. She explains why the latter was becoming unsuitable for the digital age whilst the former has been specifically developed to deal with all types of media.

Ruth Bird, Bodleian Law Librarian, explains how the original home-grown classification scheme became unfit for purpose, due to the enormous expansion of international legal materials held, and the reasons for implementing the Moys scheme. She outlines the progress and the problems encountered to date in this huge project.

This article by Katie Woolf, formerly of the Government Knowledge and Information Network, looks at the new UK Government strategy for knowledge and information (KIM). Led by the Knowledge Council, the strategy sets out the principles and actions government must take to develop the capability it needs to manage corporate knowledge and information as the key business assets they are. It discusses how the strategy will be achieved through a departmental delivery model, the relationship of the strategy with the Information Assurance agenda post data loss scandals, and the need for senior leader engagement to be the driving force to building a culture that values KIM.

In a response to issues raised at User Groups on the research capabilities of young lawyers, Tom Laidlaw of LexisNexis looked into the current legal skills environment and as a result LexisNexis have introduced the LawCampus website for students and are planning a programme for trainee solicitors involving “virtual mentors”.

This article by former law librarian, Jennifer Smith, highlights access and security issues to consider when handling sensitive information. Jennifer is a Director of the Information Management and IT consultancy, OneIS, which specialises in working with smaller organisations with complex information management requirements. The article provides practical advice and is particularly aimed at readers working in organisations without dedicated information security professionals.

Tax, national insurance, tax credits and the minimum wage are often difficult to understand. Those with questions frequently turn to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) for answers, but the HMRC website is often out-of-date and confusing. Last year, Anne Redston launched the Cobweb Campaign to sweep out the dusty corners of this huge information database.

Mark Scott and Nigel Smith provide the background to the development of Sweet & Maxwell's Legal Taxonomy before outlining its structure and explaining how it is used by Sweet & Maxwell and other Thomson Reuters companies.

This article results from the Pre-Conference Seminar presented at the BIALL Conference in June 2009 by Victoria Jannetta and Pamela Wolffsohn. Having both raised their Information Department's profiles in a better economic climate, they shared how they created opportunities to establish good positioning in their firms. They also addressed the challenges we now face in these frostier times. This was a workshop and was brought to life by spirited discussions, potential solutions and ideas on how to deal with problems faced by many of us – reduced resources and headcount.

This article by Dr Peter Clinch, Senior Subject Librarian for Law, Cardiff University, provides a brief background to, and reprints a part of, the latest revision of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) document: A Library for the Modern Law School: the Statement of Standards for University Law Library Provision in the United Kingdom. Dr Clinch was a member of the Working Party responsible for revising the standards and he adds comments describing current practices relating to the standards.

The definition of mashing in the context of content is different depending on where you look. In this example from Fiona Fogden of Baker Tilly, mashing refers to the blending of content from a variety of sources into a single location. It is a process librarians have been undertaking for years in bulletins and abstracts, but new technology brings with it new terminology as well as new opportunities.