It feels like I'm always exclaiming about the swift passage of time. But here I am again completing a proceedings issue for the International Journal of Legal Information (IJLI) and it feels like I was just doing this a week ago. In fact, it has indeed been a whole year ago since I finished issue 44.1 of the IJLI. With two children grown and away at university, and nearly nine years gone in my current position at Emory Law School, perhaps it's true what the previous generations have always said: the older one gets, the more quickly time goes by.
As I mentioned, this is the proceedings issue from the International Association of Law Libraries' (IALL) very successful 35th Annual Course, held at Keble College in historic Oxford, England. In this issue, we have many of the interesting papers presented at the conference. These include the following:
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1) Emeritus Professor Francis Reynolds’s lecture on the diversities Among Common Law Countries.
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2) Professor Menelaos Markakis’s truly edifying piece on Brexit. His talk, and now the text of his talk, are so timely, with Brexit repeatedly in the news as the process and the politics behind the process is unfolding.
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3) Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill’s useful lecture on Refugee Law, another timely piece as many countries continue to struggle with unprecedented numbers of migrants and refugees fleeing political, economic, and military crises in many parts of the world.
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4) Dr. Judith Townend provided an incredibly helpful comparison of UK and international data protection law.
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5) The role of human rights in re-shaping investor-state arbitration was the subject of Professor Susan Karamanian’s lecture. Like the other speakers at the IALL Annual Course, she generously provided the text of her comments for the benefits of IALL's readers.
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6) Mark Engsberg of the USA, Petal Kinder of Australia, Sonia Poulin of Canada, Michel Fraysse of France, and Sally Rumsely representing the UK all provided the texts of their lecture on Open Access (OA). We five speakers formed a panel on the topic of OA. The intent was to address OA from a number of national perspectives and from different legal systems – common law and civil law.
In addition to Book Reviews by book review editor, Thomas Mills, there is a new name associated with the International Calendar, Amy Flick. Amy is the Senior Reference Librarian and Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Librarian at my own institution: the Hugh F. MacMillan Law Library at Emory University School of Law. Many of you who have attended IALL Annual Courses the past several years have probably met Amy there. Amy is enthusiastic about this new role and looks forward to keeping up the traditions of the IJLI's venerable International Calendar. Amy follows in the large shoes of our former Calendar editor, Aslihan Bulut, who has chosen to step back from this work to devote time to her career at the Harvard Law Library, and especially to her young family, which grew by one more in the middle of last year. I know all of our readers wish Aslihan well and join me in welcoming Amy to the IJLI family.
By now, many, if not most of our readers, have seen that IALL has announced a change of venue for the 2017 Annual Course. The reasons for this change, briefly announced in a message to the membership in early February, are more fully explained in the President's Report within this issue. The Report is prepared by IALL President, Jeroen Vervliet, of the Peace Palace Law Library.
Several IALL members have expressed disappointment that the Philippines will not host the 2017 conference, however, IALL hopes to reschedule a conference there in the future. Helping to counter some of the mixed feelings about the highly unusual step of withdrawing from a conference venue, I am also pleased to say that the IALL 2017 Annual Course will be held in my own city, Atlanta, Georgia.
Atlanta was on the calendar to host the IALL Annual Course in 2018. When the Board decided to make a change from Manila, there was no substitute venue immediately available. A brief opportunity at the Atlanta conference venue presented itself, which allowed the Atlanta local planning committee (LPC) to move the Atlanta conference forward from October 2018 to October 2017. While Atlanta and Manila are quite different cities in most respects, I can assure you that the IALL Annual Course in Atlanta will be a wonderful opportunity for IALL members and others to come together again to learn, share, and build lasting professional relationships or form new ones. The Atlanta LPC, which is Christina Glon (Chair), Amy Flick, Michael Umberger, and yours truly, looks forward to hosting you in our beautiful, vibrant city October 22–26, 2017. Watch for further announcements and for registration information in the weeks to come. Please make plans to attend IALL in Atlanta!
