It has become increasingly common for a reader to follow a URL cited in a court opinion or a law review article, only to be met with an error message because the resource has been moved from its original online address. This form of reference rot, commonly referred to as ‘linkrot’, has arisen from the disconnect between the transience of online materials and the permanence of legal citation, and will only become more prevalent as scholarly materials move online. The present paper*, written by Jonathan Zittrain, Kendra Albert and Lawrence Lessig, explores the pervasiveness of linkrot in academic and legal citations, finding that more than 70% of the URLs within the Harvard Law Review and other journals, and 50% of the URLs within United States Supreme Court opinions, do not link to the originally cited information. In light of these results, a solution is proposed for authors and editors of new scholarship that involves libraries undertaking the distributed, long-term preservation of link contents.

The Artificial intelligence revolution is happening and is going to drastically re-shape legal research in both the private sector and academia. AI research tools present several advantages over traditional research methods. They allow for the analysis and review of large datasets (‘Big Data’) and can identify patterns that are imperceptible to human researchers. However, the wonders of AI legal research are not without perils. Because of their complexity, AI systems can escape the control and understanding of their operators and programmers. Therefore, especially when run by researchers with insufficient IT background, computational AI research may skew analyses or result in flawed research. Premised thus, the main goals of this paper, written by Ronald Yu and Gabriele Spina Alì, are to analyse some of the factors that can jeopardize the reliability of AI-assisted legal research and to review some of the solutions to mitigate this situation.

There is a wide range of sources that might fruitfully be used in criminological research. This article, by Andromachi Tseloni* and Nick Tilley**, overviews the type of evidence used in research that has recently appeared in the British Journal of Criminology, gives examples of unobtrusive administrative data that have been used in recent projects, and focuses on a single data set, the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which covers a wide range of criminological topics. Finally, it will be suggested that criminologists may be missing opportunities to draw on valuable data sets that, though imperfect, could be useful to them in their research.

At the University of Salford it is a struggle to find sufficient timetable space to deliver in-depth legal research training to new first year students. The training delivered often alienated students due to the information overload they experienced. Timetable pressures resulted in sessions being librarian-led with little interaction with students. This left students feeling overwhelmed, often nervous of using the library and performing research. As a result law students resorted to using Google as their academic research tool of choice. To combat these problems the Law Librarian, Nicola Sales, implemented the innovative training concept of ‘flipping the classroom’. Rather than using teaching time to instruct students in ‘how to’ perform research by demonstrating resources and concepts, the classroom was flipped so students studied online content before entering the classroom. Face to face teaching time was then spent actively learning through practical tasks and discussion to consolidate student learning. Students took responsibility for their own learning and teaching sessions were based on group work and discussion, facilitated by the librarian rather than being librarian-led. This article is based on the presentation, ‘Flipping Training’ delivered at the BIALL Conference 2013. It will look at how the ‘flipping the classroom’ concept works and how it has been implemented at the University of Salford. It will examine the benefits and drawbacks of flipping training as well as ideas for implementing flipped training within other organisations.

In this article, Mary Lacity and Leslie Willcocks review the practice of outsourcing business and information technology services. Research finds that outsourcing can deliver value to client organisations, but that it takes a tremendous amount of detailed management by clients and providers to realise expected benefits. The proven practices that contribute to positive outsourcing outcomes can be summarised as contractual governance, relational governance, client retained capabilities, and provider capabilities. Despite outsourcing's maturity, some enduring contractual challenges remain, particularly in the areas of incentive pricing and contract adaptability.

This article, written by Sahar Bhaimia, presents an overview of the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) (2016/679) (GDPR) which will apply automatically across the EU on 25 May 2018. The GDPR is an update and reform of existing EU data protection law, first established by the Data Protection Directive (1995/46/EC). The article is for knowledge managers and information services professionals who may be asked to take on responsibility for GDPR, and focuses on the UK. It covers the fundamentals of EU data protection law, highlights key changes brought about by the GDPR, and provides practical tips and suggestions for knowledge managers.

Big data is more than the sum of the parts; it is about scale but also how we inter-connect once disparate data sets, and mine and analyse them. It is something that has started to make a significant impact everywhere from financial markets to supermarkets. And, as Andy Williamson explains, it is starting to become an important factor in the development of public policy and for the delivery and analysis of public services. Big data offers us powerful new ways to see the world around us but this comes with the challenges of ownership, privacy and misuse: it can be used for good or to constrain people. We have to ensure that, as the uptake of big data increases, our legislation and practice keeps pace, ensuring that mistakes and misuse are prevented.

This paper examines peer-reviewed publications to learn about the relationships between artificial intelligence (AI) and the human race. For this systematic review, papers were collected from three academic databases: Scopus, Web of Science, and Academic Search Complete. From 1,222 papers reviewed, 36 papers were included. The findings indicate that there are four relationships between AI and race (i). AI causes unequal opportunities for people from certain racial groups, (ii). AI helps to detect racial discrimination, (iii). AI is applied to study health conditions of specific racial population groups, and (iv). AI is used to study demographics and facial images of people from different racial backgrounds. To widen the knowledge related to AI and race, all four finding categories in this review included supplementary studies as lessons learned for legal information management research. The authors, Channarong Intahchomphoo and Odd Erik Gundersen, use these findings to discuss how AI could impact libraries and how legal information management professionals might have to cope with the problem of biased AI.

This article details a small project undertaken by Information Skills Advisers at London South Bank University to increase student engagement in lecture theatre settings through the use of a web-based audience response system (ARS), Mentimeter. Supporting the School of Law, librarians delivered an interactive OSCOLA referencing session to a large capacity lecture theatre. A previous session was redesigned to increase student engagement and active learning utilising interactive quiz questions which students answered using mobile devices. The majority of feedback from students and staff who participated in this pilot project was positive and showed an increase in student engagement. This article is based on the presentation, ‘Have You Voted?: Teaching OSCOLA with Mentimeter’ delivered at the BIALL Annual Conference 2017. It will examine the process of adapting a lecture to include interactive content using an ARS, and will discuss the outcomes of the pilot session and explore benefits and challenges inherent in using technology of this type in a large classroom.

This is the latest report analysing the results of the Academic Law Library Survey conducted on behalf of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) and the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL). It has been written by David Gee, Deputy Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Europeana is the focus of a number of IPR issues. The portal provides access to three sets of assets: the Open Source code base, the authority-controlled metadata and the digitised content. Europeana has integrated metadata standards across the heritage domains and will now licence the metadata as a resource for the development of linked data and semantic web applications. The main rights issues concern the digitisation of public domain content and orphan works. Digitisation of out-of-copyright analogue material does not create new rights and the Europeana Public Domain Charter provides guidelines for the sector. An inhibitor to digitisation is the problem of orphan works, now under review by the European Commission.

Against a backdrop of increasing data security and privacy concerns, current data protection law will soon be overhauled by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Previous research has indicated a lack of data protection management in libraries, however, it has been nine years since the latest study. This article by Josephine Bailey aims to provide an updated review of the extent of data protection management in UK library and information services and gauge preparation for the incoming GDPR.

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.

In recent years, the legal informatics area has slowly begun to develop as artificial intelligence and its related techniques and technologies expand their reach in the field of law. The legal, computational and data science communities are collaborating to build computational and data-driven innovative legal models to improve and advance all aspects of the existing legal system with the effective use of modern computer technologies such as machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing. In this research paper, the authors - Sugam Sharma, Samia Gamoura, Deva Prasad and Arti Aneja - explore these important factors with the potential to transform the existing approach to jurisprudence into a smart and intelligent legal system utilising automation. Such a justice system could be envisioned, in the near future which would be faster, fairer and economically more feasible, even for the highly marginalized, underprivileged and poor societies in the world.

This article by Natasha Choolhun, with input from Emma Harris and colleagues, considers how the proliferation of freely available legal information has affected standards of information literacy and research capability in the current legal environment. Real life examples are given to illustrate how staff in law firms are using resources such as Google and Wikipedia in preference over authoritative legal material. The phrase “Google Generation” is explored and consideration is given to how law schools and commercial firms are attempting to instil in their lawyers principles of good information literacy and research skills.

This is the latest report analysing the results of the Society of Legal Scholars and BIALL Survey. It has been written by Peter Clinch, Senior Subject Librarian for Law, Cardiff University.

This article, analysing the results of the Academic Law Library Survey for 2011/2012 has been written by David Gee, Deputy Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. The survey was conducted on behalf of Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) and BIALL.

This is the latest report analysing the results of the Society of Legal Scholars and BIALL Survey. It has been written by Peter Clinch, Senior Subject Librarian for Law, Cardiff University.

This is the latest report analysing the results of the Society of Legal Scholars and BIALL Academic Law Library Survey. It has been written by David Gee, Deputy Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London.

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.