Case Project: 1st 6-monthly report to HEFCE: 29/06/01
Case Project: Law Library Collaboration in Yorkshire & Humberside
Funding body:
HEFCE: Restructuring and Collaboration Fund
Total amount:
£160,000
Duration of award:
01/01 - 12/02
Project Manager:
Elizabeth Kensler
Lead Institution:
University of Leeds
Period of report:
01/01 - 31/06
Contents
1 Report outline
2 Project summary
3 Project management
4 Academic collaboration
5 Cross-sectoral collaboration
6 Collaboration with suppliers and publishers
7 Regional legal web gateway
8 Future developments within next reporting period
9 Appendices
1. Report outline
The aim of this report is to outline the activities and progress of the Case Project since its start
date against the objectives and the work-packages outlined in the workplan (Appendix 9.3)
and to indicate future development work. The report is structured into workplan areas. Within
each area, progress against deliverables within this 6-month timeframe is specified, with more
detail of each deliverable following where appropriate.
2. Project Summary
The subject associations in law and the legal professions, led by Sir Mark Potter, raised the
issue of the funding of legal education, especially law libraries, at a meeting with the Chief
Executive of HEFCE on 20 July 1999. As a result of that meeting, it was suggested that a
pilot project be developed to establish models of co-operation and analyse the cost of
collaboration between law libraries. This work contributes significantly to meeting the rapidly
developing academic needs of a subject whose information needs are both extensive and
expensive.
The Case Project was therefore established as a feasibility study to evaluate the possibility of
enhancing access to legal research materials through increased collaboration. Based in
Yorkshire and Humberside, the project is examining the issues involved in increased
collaboration between the seven university law libraries in the region. The project will
develop a web-based legal information gateway so that researchers can search and browse a
range of resources from their desktops. The feasibility of increased and effective collaboration
is being considered through:
 improved access to legal research material through searchable online collection
descriptions and collection strengths and weaknesses information;
 development of an online regional legal union catalogue of law reports and journals;
 an automated regional document delivery service;
 improved cross-sectoral co-operative library access arrangements and resource sharing;
 development of a regional collection development strategy;
 investigation of consortial purchase and user-led customisation of a legal online product.
Once models of collaboration have been established and documented, a process for scaling up
the project on either a national, or region by region basis will be developed.
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3. Project Management
3.1 Deliverables
The deliverables/objectives in this area for this 6-month period were:
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Co-ordinate Steering Group meetings (quarterly)
Co-ordinate Project Team meetings (bi-monthly)
Report to Steering Group and Project Team
Manage and plan project's finances
Reports to HEFCE (every 6 months)
Create project handbook
Introduction to Project Team members
Start up and maintain project's web pages
Set up mailing list for information on the project
Establish focus groups for feedback and evaluation
Appoint project's support staff
Disseminate findings and progress of project
Feb 01 Feb 01 Feb 01 Jan 01 June 01
Feb 01
Feb 01
Mar 01
Mar 01
July 01
Apr 01
Feb 01 -
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As displayed, these objectives have all been met with the exception of the establishment of a
project mailing list. At this stage of the project it was not deemed necessary to have a project
mailing list as the Project Team is small and communication is achieved successfully through
individual and group e-mailing. The need for a mailing list will be reviewed regularly. For
further information on the individual objectives, please see below.
3.2 Steering Group meetings: The Case Project Steering Group is referred to in the Project
Plan as the Management Group. The Steering Group meets quarterly to advise and steer the
Project Team to ensure that the aims and objectives are met - they have responsibility for the
strategic direction of the project and for resolving any significant problems which may arise.
(Appendix 9.1: Terms of Reference and Membership List). Two Steering Group meetings
have been held: 9/3/01 and 13/6/01.
3.3 Project Team meetings: The Project Team, comprised of legal information specialists (or
equivalent) from each partner institution, meets bi-monthly to discuss operational details and
the impact of changes on the schedule. (Appendix 9.2: Terms of Reference and Membership
List). Two Project Team meetings have been held: 2/3/01 and 4/27/01.
3.4 Workplan: A project workplan (Appendix 9.3) was agreed in January and remains
dynamic to reflect the nature of the project.
3.5 Letter of Understanding: A Project Letter of Understanding was sent out to all
consortium Library Directors to sign. (Appendix 9.4).
3.6 Visits to project partners: An early priority was to meet the main participants in the
project - such as Project Team members, SINTO's (Sheffield Information Organisation) Legal
Information Group members, and both British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC)
and Butterworths' representatives. This was achieved in the first 2 months of the project and
communication and feedback is ongoing. The Project Team remains the main connector
between the project and the academic researchers in each institution.
3.7 Web pages: The project web pages are available at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/case. The web
site provides further information on the project aims and objectives, project documentation,
contact details, feedback. The web site will also be the site for prototype evaluation of
services and databases before the official gateway is set up at the beginning of 2002. It will be
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an additional means of dissemination and a way of organising project documentation for the
distributed team.
3.8 Questionnaire/focus groups: A questionnaire (Appendix 9.5) was developed for the
region's academic legal researchers to identify their existing methods of locating research
materials and to establish their present and future research needs (to be completed and sent
back by mid July). Feedback from legal academic researchers will be gathered first and
formal information gathering will then be extended to cross-sectoral bodies (librarians (or
equivalent) within FE, public libraries, law firms, government libraries, law society, etc) by
the end of August.
3.9 Staffing: The position of Technical Officer was specified in the project proposal as
support to the project manager, on a part-time one-year basis. It is noted that technical
expertise is needed principally in the creation and maintenance of the legal web gateway
server, in the creation of a union catalogue of law reports and serials, in the formation of the
collection mapping databases and in the technical side of the Inside evaluation. With further
consideration of staffing and technical issues, the difficulty of hiring an appropriate person
with the necessary broad range of skills and for the length of time that this expertise would be
needed, led to the decision to outsource a number of the project's more technical jobs where
feasible and cost-effective and in lieu of a technical post, hire a part-time, one-year
Information Officer. The Project would thereby buy in technical expertise while having an
additional part-time position in support. The Project will share a full-time one-year position
with one of the Faculty Teams in the library at the University of Leeds: a 40% law librarian
with the remaining 60% of this position as a part-time Case Project Information Officer. The
position was advertised nationally on June 15, 2001 and interviews will be held by July 13,
2001. The post-holder could be in position by the middle of August. (Appendices 9.6 & 9.7).
3.10 Dissemination/publicity:
 A project logo, project stationery and publicity flyer were produced.
 The Project Manager represented the Case Project at UKCLE's (UK Centre for Legal
Education) E-Legal Information workshop on 12/2/01: it was an opportunity to meet and
discuss the project with a range of legal information providers (organisations and
publishers). Abdul Paliwala, Director C&IT, UKCLE, advised that UKCLE and BILETA
(British and Irish Legal Education Technology Association) would assist with publicity
on the project.
 Helen Davies, Faculty Team Librarian for Law at University of Leeds and Project Team
member, attended the BIALL Conference in Cork on June 8-11, 2001, representing the
Case Project and disseminating publicity material.
 The Project Manager represented the Case Project at the ASVIN Workshop on Library
Co-operation and Collaboration (http://www.asvin.ac.uk/asvinevents.htm) on 25/4/01, a
useful opportunity to hear from other similar projects working on a subject or regional
collaborative basis. Similar projects have found a collaborative collection management
policy to not be feasible and have instead aimed to encourage institutions to write and
make available formal collection policy documents.
 The Project Manager met with the ARCHway project in York on 24//4/01 to discuss
similar issues of feasibility for academic library collaboration in the archaeological field.
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4. Academic collaboration
4.1 Deliverables
The deliverables/objectives in this area for this 6-month period were:
Evaluate regional legal collections
Feedback from law depts on collection requirements/user needs
Examine access policy to regional collections
Undertake detailed collection analysis of regional legal collections
May 01
May 01-Mar 02
Apr 01
June - Oct 01
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Legal collection evaluation and access information have both been documented. Feedback
from law departments has been ongoing through the legal information specialists since the
start of the project and recently more formally through the distribution of the survey on legal
information gathering behaviour and user needs (due back July 20, 2001). Progress has been
made on collection analysis and the project is on target for a completion date of October for
this database.
5. Cross-sectoral collaboration
5.1 Deliverables
The deliverables/objectives in this area for this 6-month period were:
Set up cross-sectoral pilot study in Sheffield area with SINTO
Explore/detail services already provided by cross-sectoral libraries
Examine issues of making resources available to c-s libraries
Examine scalability of developed model of c-s collaboration
June 01 - Oct 02
June - Oct 01
June 01 - Feb 02
June 01- Oct 02
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Through attending 2 SINTO Legal Information Group meetings (14/2/01 and 20/6/01),
valuable contact with legal information specialists from a variety of organisations has been
made and feedback gained on what they feel would be feasible and useful for the project to
work on. The SINTO meetings have highlighted the specific areas of mutual benefit involved
in cross-sectoral collaboration that should impact the project and continue to be an invaluable
opportunity to collect the views of the users and providers of these services. Communication
is ongoing.
6. Collaboration with suppliers and publishers
6.1 Deliverables
The deliverables/objectives in this area for this 6-month period were:
Work with BLDSC on Inside trial to 7 HE institutions
Work with Butterworths on customisation of legal product
Explore possible benefits of academic consortial purchase
June 01 - Nov 02
Mar - Sept 01
Mar - Oct 01
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6.2 Inside trial/BLDSC: Following meetings and discussion with Mike McGrath at BLDSC,
it was agreed that BL would provide the Case Project with a free subscription to Inside for the
duration of the trial and any additional technical support and advice needed (including taking
on all registration work involved with the trial). The Project aims to start negotiation with
BLDSC in July for an Inside trial to consortium institutions. Since the start of the project,
plans to extend ZETOC (joint JISC/MIMAS service) as a full text document delivery service
specifically for academics (copyright fee waived) are ongoing. It is hoped that ZETOC will be
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available by December 2001. A ZETOC trial will be incorporated into the project when
feasible.
6.3 Butterworths: Negotiations with Lorena Sutherland at Butterworths have been ongoing
since the start of the project, including discussions on consortial purchase (including crosssectoral access) and possible customisation of an existing electronic legal product. Following
a trial of Butterworths databases that finished at the end of April, the Project Team is starting
to establish a direction to pursue with customisation. This direction will also be formed by
feedback from existing users (academics and students) through questionnaires and focus
groups. Butterworths does not offer a wide variety of electronic legal journal titles so
alternative providers, specifically for consortial purchase and offering cross-sectoral access,
are being explored. So far, the Project Team have expressed positive comments on the
increased communication that is ongoing with Butterworths. The Project has afforded them
the opportunity to discuss directly with Lorena issues and concerns over electronic
information provision and wider publishing issues. It is hoped that the project will provide an
ongoing forum for increased and effective communication with publishers. Negotiation is
ongoing.
7. Regional legal web gateway
7.1 Deliverables
The deliverables/objectives in this area for this 6-month period were:
Create union list of regional law reports and serials
Create general collection description/mapping database
Create collection strength indicator database
Establish web based legal information skills tuition
Mar - July 01
Sept - Nov 01
Sept - Nov 01
Aug - Sept 01
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7.2 Online union catalogue of law reports and journals: Working with Leeds University's
Information Systems Services (ISS), a searchable online union database of law reports and
serials will be created - in the first instance for the 7 partner institutions but with the plan to
expand this to other regional legal collections (where agreed/feasible). Data from each of the
consortium institutions has been entered into an Excel file with holdings information and is
ready to be converted to the web-based union catalogue by the end of June. This database will
be accessible from the project web site for evaluation purposes until the end of 2001 and will
move to the project gateway at the beginning of 2002 (with the other services to be provided
on the gateway). This activity will facilitate the document delivery pilot work-package as well
as being a structure within which cross-sectoral collaboration can be progressed.
7.3 Collection descriptions: 2 collection description/mapping databases are in progress:
 The first, a database of general legal collection descriptions, indicating collection subject
areas and highlighting access and institution information (expanding existing RIDING
information) for the 7 partner institutions primarily. These collection descriptions will be
searchable through general subject headings and abstract key words. Once a prototype
interface has been developed, cross-sectoral bodies will be approached to discuss
extending coverage to their collections. The target for availability of this database for
evaluation and expansion is July 2001.
 The second, a more detailed collection mapping database, will give precise information
on collection strengths and weaknesses (based on the Conspectus collection description
method). Users will have the ability to search by specific subject within the legal field (ie:
"trade regulation") and be given an indication of which institutions hold collections in this
area and to what strength (ie: 3 - teaching; 4 - research or 5 - comprehensive). Conspectus
collection analysis is due to be completed by November to have the database available for
evaluation by the end of the year. Currently underway is an initial assessment of the law
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collections at Leeds and LMU to establish a methodology for this database of collection
descriptions.
7.4 Information Skills: The YHUA expert support and information skills meeting in Hull on
23/4/01 discussed current practice for information skills provision in Y&H HE institutions
and opportunities for collaboration. This investigation will be advanced in the next meeting
(3/7/01) by identifying and sharing best practice. The Case Project will examine the extent of
collaboration possible in sharing information skills provision and expert support in the subject
of law as an initial feasibility study for the group. At the next Project Team meeting we will
explore practical ways in which we can share online documentation and skills training,
continuing discussions previously held.
8. Future developments within next reporting period:
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Gateway: The project gateway will be run from a server based at the University of Leeds.
Services to be offered on the gateway include: the legal union serials/reports catalogue;
legal collection descriptions databases; document delivery pilot; formalised access
policies and information on each legal information organisation; collaborative online
documentation; a legal skills tutorial; relevant links. With the formation of the project
focus groups and through the project team, feedback will be collected on what additional
services users (academic, students, law librarians and cross-sectoral bodies) would like
offered on the gateway (content and design). It is planned to launch the gateway by
November 2001.
Document delivery pilot: The Project Team will co-ordinate with ILL staff in each
project institution in order to implement the Document Delivery pilot, as it will be using
existing ILL staff, with cost and time implications. This trial is due to start in January
2002 for 9 months, once the necessary infrastructure (server, union catalogue of law
serials and reports) is in place.
Dissemination: An appropriate dissemination/publicity strategy for the next 6 months
will be produced by the end of July 2001. Objectives include: articles in: UKCLE's
September newsletter; JILT (Journal of Information, Law and Technology); Journal of the
British and Irish Association of Law Librarians; Library Association Record; and a report
at the joint annual conference of the Committee of Heads of University Law Schools and
the Society of Public Teachers of Law; as well as representing the project at other
relevant meetings/conferences.
Focus groups: Based on feedback from the questionnaires, cross-sectoral focus groups
will be formed by the end of July to have a mechanism for continual evaluation.
Cross-sectoral: Extend contact with SINTO's Legal Information Group re: online serials
catalogue; legal collection description databases; information skills/online documentation
collaboration; access.
Evaluation: Peter Clinch is due to attend the September 2001 Steering Group meeting as
evaluator.
9. Appendices
9.1 Steering Group Terms of Reference and Membership
9.2 Project Team Terms of Reference and Membership
9.3 Project Workplan
9.4 Letter of Understanding
9.5 Questionnaire
9.6 Staffing report
9.7 Case Information Officer job description
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