David Wills, Squire Law Librarian at the University of Cambridge, has been elected to the position of President of the British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) for the year 2010/2011. This is the first time that a librarian from the University of Cambridge has been elected President (formerly referred to as the Chair) of the Association.
David Wills has been the Head of the Squire Law Library, a dependent library of Cambridge University Library, since 1996, and has worked with BIALL since 1998, serving on several of the Association's standing committees during that time. He served as President-Elect during 2009/2010.
The British and Irish Association of Law librarians (BIALL)
The British and Irish Association of Law Librarians was formed in 1969 as an independent and self-supporting professional body with the aim of promoting the better management of law libraries and legal information units in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. BIALL represents the interests of law librarians and legal information professionals and other suppliers of legal literature and reference materials.
The Association has in excess of 900 members (including both personal and institutional memberships) who work in the courts, government departments, higher education, chambers, law firms, professional bodies, commercial and other organisations with legal information units. Other members are based in legal publishing and the book supplying industry.
Amongst many activities BIALL provides training courses, conferences, journals and other publications, a website, mailing list, a blog, bursaries, a duplicates exchange scheme and meetings for members. It also co-operates with other organsations nationally and internationally
The BIALL Annual Conference, and the Association's AGM, takes place in June. In 2010 the conference was held in Brighton:
http://www.biall.org.uk/pages/2010-brighton.html
In 2011 the conference moves to Gateshead, Tyne & Wear:
http://www.biall.org.uk/pages/gateshead-2011.html
The Association promotes a number of annual awards for excellence within the profession:
http://www.biall.org.uk/pages/awards-and-bursaries.html
BIALL also offers a range of publications including the journal Legal Information Management, which is published by Cambridge University Press: