The Inner Temple is one of the four historic Inns of Court. They are unincorporated associations which have existed since the 14th Century and play a central role in the recruitment of student barristers, as well the training and continued professional development of established barristers. The Inns of Court hold the exclusive rights to call candidates to practise law at the bar of England and Wales.

The Inner Temple Library is one of four libraries which provide a service to barristers, judges and bar students who are members of the Inns of Court.

In April 2007 the Library launched a current awareness blog. This was the first time we had offered an electronic current awareness service. Up to that point current awareness consisted solely of press cuttings and printouts of Lawtel and CLI daily news updates displayed within the Library.

The idea of providing a current awareness service was first raised at a staff meeting in November 2006 when we were discussing ways in which we could expand services to members outside London who were not able to use the Library in person. (Remote access to subscription databases is not an option for these users as the suppliers only allow access within the Library.) We hoped that the proposed electronic service would also be of interest to London-based members, as well as to other lawyers and information professionals. The Deputy Librarian had successfully introduced a current awareness service in her previous post as a law firm librarian and she convinced the team that a similar service would be popular with our members.

There were no funds in the Library budget for the provision of this new service. The main resource available was (and continues to be) the time and expertise of Library staff. The format of the service was one of the first matters to be decided. Word documents and PDFs were discounted. Managing email distribution lists and uploading content to the Library’s web site on a daily basis would have been too time consuming. We felt that a blog would be able to deliver the kind of service we wanted. It would be easy to update and edit throughout the day and could be made available in a variety of formats, such as web, email, RSS feed, mobile and widgets. Such a service would be very up to date and flexible to access.

We decided to use a hosted blog which could be set up without needing help from IT specialists. We chose WordPress because research showed it was considered to be reliable and the templates were appropriate for our requirements. All the software we intended to use had to be free for the reasons already indicated. Apart from WordPress, we selected FeedBurner for the RSS feed and email and MoFuse (which is short for Mobile Fusion for the mobile version. Again these were chosen for their reliability.

Content

The next matter to consider was the content and the sources we would use. Our aim was to provide a selective current awareness weblog with posts on new case law, changes in legislation and legal news in England and Wales. As our barrister members practice in all areas of law, we needed to provide broad subject coverage. We were limited to using free internet resources. We decided that we would cover cases from BAILII, the Weekly Law Reports Daily Summaries and the Times Law Reports. We would include new legislation from OPSI and monitor the websites of relevant government departments and various professional bodies. We would cover legal news stories from the quality national newspapers and also stories from the BBC and OUT-LAW.com. We contacted all sources for permission to abstract and link. We thought we would not be breaching copyright but felt we should make contact as a matter of courtesy.

We decided that we would also tag the entries using (as far as possible) the controlled vocabulary used for the in-house subject indexing of the Library catalogue. As the database grows this should prove useful as it will allow users to view in a single list all the items on a given topic or to trace a legal story as it develops.

Problems?

The service has been relatively problem-free in the two years it has been running, though we do not have as much control as if we had paid for a hosted service. When there have been minor problems, such as the occasional non delivery or erratic delivery of the email service, we have sometimes been unable to resolve them ourselves and have been reliant on email forums. This is because we have no direct contacts for the software providers.

The other main concern has been the implications this project has for staff time. The posts can be done throughout the day but the bulk of posts to the blog have to be completed by 10.45 am (at least until the start of BST) if they are to be included in the daily email. Initially one member of staff was adding the majority of posts. This proved to be a substantial amount of one person’s time and we now involve two other team members. The adding of subject headings is another time-consuming element and has to be done retrospectively. However, since this adds considerable value to the database, we feel it is time well spent.

Developments and feedback

We have continued to look at ways of developing and publicising the blog. Recently we have been upgrading our gateway site AccessToLaw, which provides annotated links to free UK and Commonwealth legal web sites. As these two services complement each other, we decided to add to the AccessToLaw home page the latest stories from the blog, as well as a link to the current awareness weblog as a whole.

Statistics from the blog host show that the service has attracted a wide range of users. Subscribers include barristers, judges and BVC students, as well as solicitors and librarians. The feedback we have received has been very positive. “It really is an excellent facility, and I already find it invaluable. It is particularly useful when I am out of chambers, in the UK or abroad, as it provides not only information but also all the hot-links I need” (from a QC); “I find this service very helpful and have subscribed to the awareness emails” (from a barrister); “It has become an indispensable tool for keeping up to date” (from a CPS lawyer); “I’d like to congratulate you on a fantastic service. You clearly take a great deal of care in the presentation and content. Law reports and a full news breakdown!” (from a law firm subscriber); “I’d just like to say that as a law beginner your blog has been absolutely invaluable to me in terms of making real law accessible and is the prime reason why I have chosen to join Inner Temple” (from a BVC student); “The Inner Temple Library [blog] is a must have resource for any law student who feels as though they do, at the very least, want to appear serious” (from a legal blog).

The team who maintain the blog are very committed to its continuation. It is clear from the feedback that the service is valued not only by our own members but by a much wider community and this makes its upkeep and development very important to us.

Contact the Inner Temple Library Team via Sally McLaren, SMcLaren@innertemple.org.uk.