Adding Value in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Legal Library
The Legal Library is part of the FCO Legal Information Group and serves a team of more than 30 Legal Advisers at home and overseas. The Legal Advisers cover a range of law subjects, but primarily focus on international law.
What was done?
The Legal Library provides timely, quality information to inform the work of the by the Legal Advisers. Modernising the current awareness service involved replacing the hard copy 'table of contents' service with electronic alerts. This entailed us looking at the Legal Library journals distributions list and checking if these are on our databases. Finding out how to set up e-journal alerts using our online databases and writing up guidance notes on ‘how to set up e-journals from your desktop’. We then informed the Legal Advisers about the new system and arranged one-to-one training for the Legal Advisers on how to set up e-journal alerts. Finally, we discontinued the circulation of contents pages.
We had already begun to circulate contents pages by email and, when possible, provide full text articles via email. It was agreed that this was more effective than circulating a photocopy which takes time to get to all those on the circulation list. Alerts can be set up on some e-journal sites and also on Westlaw, which provides alerts for journals, case-law, and current awareness for a variety of subjects.
What changed as a result?
Legal Advisers receive the table of contents information more quickly. By stopping the old labour-intensive system it means library staff can concentrate on other tasks.
What are the benefits so far?
New issues of journals are usually added to the electronic version before being published in hard copy.
Where we have access to the electronic version of journals we may able to cancel the hard copy, which has saved us money.
Legal Advisers are able to get the full text journals and related links to other articles more quickly, keeping the Legal Advisers better informed, which in turn makes it easier for them to carry out their work.
Legal Advisers have tailored their alerts so that they are kept informed about developments in specific subjects.
Legal Advisers receive up-to-date information, which includes not just journal literature, but case-law and legislation. In the past they haven’t been able to get this type of information from one source. Obtaining this information from one source electronically has helped them to do their work more effectively and efficiently.