The LL.M. Subject Forum is an event held at the beginning of each academic year to help current LL.M. students decide which courses to take. Course convenors for each course discuss for approximately 10 minutes the goals and objectives of their course. Potential applicants to the LL.M. viewing this video must bear in mind the students who were in the audience were intended as the target audience. Most of the courses offered each year will run in subsequent years, but not necessarily all of them. Please see The LL.M. Curriculum for more information.

Transcript

Good morning. My name is David Wills and I’m the Squire Law librarian and prior to the’ beauty parade’ that Professor Barnard referred to, it just gives me a few moments to just very briefly introduce the Squire Law Library to you and also just to introduce Hazel Dean, my colleague from the library. The reason for bringing Hazel along this morning is just so that you know who she is, because she’s your main contact within the library. She looks after the LL.M. collection and some of the resources associated with the LL.M. programme and therefore is a very useful contact for you as you start to use the library during your course work.

As I say, it’s a very helpful moment for me just to introduce the library to you. We have library tours and some of you came on the first of the library tours which took place yesterday. There are more tours today and tomorrow and next Monday and there’ll be more about that in just a moment when we talk more as we go through the slides. Now, for those of you that are new to Cambridge, and some of you I think have been on our undergraduate courses in the past, so you’ll know a little bit about us, but for those of you that are brand new and maybe have just arrived, you may want to know where the library is. It’s on the top three floors of this building, so straight up the stairs, floors one, two and three.

What are we really all about? Our aim is to support all the teaching and research of the faculty and that relates, of course, very much to the courses and the programmes that are put on, including your LL.M. programme. Now, where the library is concerned, we’re one of the largest academic law libraries in the UK. We have 180,000 volumes and several thousand serial titles. We’re well over a hundred years old and we’re affiliated to the university library, Cambridge University Library, which is one of the great academic research collections of the UK with some six million books, in fact more than six million books, and increasing all the time. It’s also one of the legal deposit libraries of the UK and Ireland and it’s also a documentation centre for UK government, UN and EU documentation, so really important resources and research collections just on the doorstep here. We’re also one of 110 libraries in the university. There are an awful lot of libraries around the place. This one, of course, the Squire Law Library, is dedicated to law but there are legal collections around, particularly in the college libraries, and other resources around as well.

What can you expect from us as a library to support you on the LL.M. programme? The usual things, reference services, all the things that you would expect to find in a modern library. Our collections on the shelves, of course, are historic as well as current and modern and you’ll find all the collections, I suspect, that you’re going to require for the purposes of your study. Whether you’re doing the taught courses or whether you’re doing a thesis option, we cover all the various areas of law and comparative law across the world. You’ll find the collections, as I say, on floors one, two and three. I should just mention that in your registration, you will have received a copy of the library guide and also some notes about the LL.M. collection and things relating very much to your course from the library perspective; obviously very important just to take note of those. Where the LL.M. students are concerned, you do have some borrowing privileges from the library. In essence, the library tends to be a reference only collection, especially for our undergraduate population, but for the LL.M.’s we have a dedicated LL.M. collection for your use that supports the teaching programmes. Hazel runs that particular collection and you need to see Hazel if you want to register for borrowing privileges from that.

We have a whole range of digital resources as well that support the LL.M. programme and we have a range of other facilities around the building. Just to mention a few, the Maitland Legal History Room, for those of you that are interested in English legal history. We have our digital infrastructure and wireless networking around the building and you’ll find all the things that again you would expect in terms of technology throughout the library. Whether it be standalone PCs or networked PCs, facilities to use your laptops, printing, scanning, photocopying facilities, the usual things. We have the Freshfields Legal IT Room on the second floor and during the course of the first term particularly, and I think also will probably drift into the second term as well, one of my colleagues, Lesley Dingle, puts on various different courses which are optional for you to come along to. These are normally dedicated to international comparative and European Union law, in terms of how to get the best out of the resources that are available to you. You may wish to sign up to attend one or other of those courses and you’ll be notified about those during the year via email.

So, yes, we have a whole range of things, digital resources; web-based links and resources; the Newton Library Catalogue, which brings together the holdings of all the libraries across Cambridge; electronic journals; other e-resources including some e-books as well and all the usual suspects in terms of legal databases such as Lexis, Westlaw and all those other services that you’d expect to find from a modern law library.

We have a range of induction tours. As I said, we had one yesterday, and about 25 of you came on that one. We have other induction tours programmed in, they’re at these times over the next few days, and if you want to come up and sign up for one of those tours the sign-up sheets are just at the top of the stairs on the first floor. You can just put your name down and then come along at the appropriate time. It takes around about 40 minutes and it just gives me a chance to go into a little bit more detail with you and just physically show you around the library, where things are.

So I’m going to leave you, so that we don’t drift on and you keep to your timetable. Look at the Squire web pages, there’s a lot of information there, things that will help you with your course work, with your research, and with the teaching programme. We very much look forward to seeing you in the library, coming on the tours, and using the library. I really wish you very well for the coming year. As Professor Barnard said, good luck with the course and really enjoy your time in Cambridge. I think you’re now going to hear about the Cambridge Pro Bono project and also the Cambridge Journal of International & Comparative Law, so I’ll hand the floor over.

Thank you.

Added on 05/10/2011.

Last modified on 06/10/2011

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