The Annual Academic Law Library Survey, conducted by David Gee and Laura Griffiths at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies on behalf of the Society of Legal Scholars (SLS) and British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL), provides a snapshot of the staffing, expenditure on acquisitions, subscriptions to databases and range of services provided in the academic year by university and college libraries in the UK and Ireland.

It is the only survey of its kind and provides data which academic law library managers use to benchmark their own services and law course validation bodies note when appraising the provision of institutions seeking to run law courses.

The 2017/2018 survey report has just been published and is freely available via SAS-Space at https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/9281/. The report will also be published in Legal Information Management (ISSN: 1472-6696) later in the year.

The report is based on returns from 93 university and college libraries in the UK and Ireland (institutions offering either undergraduate, postgraduate or vocational courses) who responded to the survey conducted in March 2019. The report includes a summary of key findings, a compilation of the statistics, conclusions drawn from the figures and illustrative diagrams.

David Gee is Librarian at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. 

The SLS/BIALL Academic Law Library Survey 2017/2018 will be available in Volume 19, Issue 3 (in press) of Legal Information Management, published by Cambridge University Press.

Links to all previous SLS/BIALL Academic Law Library Surveys are listed on the IALS website and on the School of Advanced Study‘s e-repository SAS-SPACE.