Session 1B
14.00 – 15.00 Parallel Session 1B
"Opening Up the UK’s Foreign and International Law Collections : the FLARE initiative and the FLAG databases"
Hester Swift – Institute of Advanced Legal Studies,
Peter Clinch – Cardiff University,
Lesley Dingle – Squire Law Library
Dr. Peter Clinch is Senior Subject Librarian – Law, Cardiff University. He is the developer of the FLAG database, the FLARE Index to Treaties database and is a member of FLARE. Twice winner of the Wallace Breem Memorial Award for outstanding contributions to the world of legal information, he was also winner of the Wildy-BIALL Law Librarian of the Year award in 2006.
Peter has spoken at numerous conferences, seminars and training events, two of the most recent being: 'Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue'. Presentation on the FLAG database, the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations and the new FLARE Index to Treaties, to the BIALL Foreign and International Law seminar held at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, London, March 2009; 'Revising the UK Academic Law Library Standards'. Parallel session at the BIALL Annual Study Conference, Dublin, June 2008.
Lesley Dingle has been Foreign and International Law Librarian at the Squire Law Library, University of Cambridge since 1997, and was formerly at Nottingham University, and Librarian at City University, London. She teaches legal research in the Faculty of Law at Cambridge to under- and post-graduate students. She is a senior member of Wolfson College where she is involved with the post-graduate Thesis Writing Group. Lesley also serves on the Advisory Committee of the AALL-produced Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals and acts as a consultant for the UK section of “The Bluebook” published by the Harvard Law Review Association. Her interests include research on the history of the Law Faculty at Cambridge.
Hester Swift has been Foreign and International Law Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London since February 2007 and was formerly European Union Librarian at the Law Society Library. She was a speaker at the BIALL Treaties Seminar, March 2007; City Legal Information Group seminars on EU legislation and EU case law, June and November 2006 and November 2008; and the BIALL EU study day, April 2003. She has been a contributor since 2006 to City Law School’s annual textbook, Case Preparation (Oxford University Press), and is Secretary of the EU Databases User Group.
Outline:
The session will be about the FLARE (Foreign Law Research) collaboration to develop and safeguard the UK’s foreign law collections and promote their use. It will include demonstrations of the FLAG (Foreign Law Guide) database and the brand new FLAG Treaties Index, as well as the the FLARE website. Tips for foreign and international law research will be included.
The session will cover:
- What is FLARE and what are its aims?
- FLARE’s collaborative collection development initiatives
- FLARE’s work towards raising expertise in the use of the UK’s foreign and international collections
- Using the FLAG database to trace collections of foreign law
- The FLAG treaties index
