Intute Law - Internet Resource Catalogue

IALS was actively involved for more than 10 years as law section editors in the development of Intute: Law, the UK's gateway to high quality legal information sources on the Internet and virtual training materials.

Intute was established as a free national service enabling lecturers, researchers and students to discover and access quality Internet resources. Intute is a composite name derived from 'Internet' and 'Tutorial' and was intended to convey the experiences of guided learning and online resource discovery. Intute included a dedicated Law Gateway ( http://www.intute.ac.uk/law/ )

Although Intute is still accessible on the Web, the service effectively closed in July 2011 following the withdrawal of funding by JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Council). No new records, updates or maintenance is being carried out on the Intute Internet resource catalogue. See Intute FAQ for more information on the loss of funding.

Work here at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) in 2011 has developed the Eagle-i Internet Portal for Law (http://www.ials.sas.ac.uk/eagle-i.htm) as a successor service, rescuing the evaluative Intute: Law records (originally created by IALS staff) and offering a new Internet resource database, updated to give rapid and reliable access to the best of the Web for law. Through Eagle-i the Institute aims to continue to provide a quality-driven online service for legal researchers.

The Virtual Training Suite component of the Intute service, a series of free subject-focused interactive Internet research skills tutorials, is continuing thanks to an agreement between the original developers at the University of Bristol and TutorPro Ltd, a firm well-experienced in developing authoring tools, learning and content management systems and courseware.

Internet for Law, the free interactive legal Internet research skills tutorial edited and updated by Steven Whittle at IALS, will continue to be available on the Web at: http://www.vtstutorials.co.uk/tutorial/law . TutorPro intend to develop mobile versions of the tutorials for delivery across smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices. The tuorial gives practical advice and examples on how to make discerning use of the Internet to help find information for coursework, assignments and other legal research projects. Why Internet Research Skills matter (PDF). An archive copy of Internet for Law 2009 edition with updates to January 2011 is available for download from JORUM.

Since the advent of the Web, IALS has been actively involved in selecting, evaluating and linking to free law resources on the Internet, identifying and providing descriptive records of sites capable of supporting scholarly and professional work. The Eagle-i Internet Portal for Law is a free to use dedicated portal to high-quality legal information sources on the Web. Coverage includes UK, European, Foreign, Comparative and International law.

Under our agreement with Intute, as section editors for law since 1999, we are able to reuse and effectively rescue the records we created for Intute: Law for further academic and legal research purposes. The Eagle-i Internet Portal for Law features a freely available searchable web database which will help ensure that evaluative records of quality web resources (including selected new additions) continue to be available to support legal studies and research for the UK. The initial project to establish the Eagle-i Internet Portal for Law was supported by modest development funding from the School of Advanced Study , University of London .

Background information about Intute in the IALS Community on SAS-SPACE e-repository and Globalex article about Intute Law


Intute Law was developed from the SOSIG Law Gateway - which was honoured with the International Association of Law Libraries ' Website Award 2003. The International Association of Law Libraries is a worldwide organization of librarians, libraries, and other persons and institutions concerned with foreign and international law. The Association's annual award seeks to recognize valuable legal information websites, and encourage the development of useful, authoritative, reliable, and user-friendly sites. The Award Committee described SOSIG Law as "a model of a subject gateway where the quality of the resources is evaluated and with great reliability and relevance within the legal field. The site is very user- friendly with search and browse facilities for both the professional user and the end- user"

The IALL Award represents generous recognition of the growing international scope, reach and reputation of this UK national service. IALS aims to continue this valuable work in support of the legal research community through the development of its Eagle-i Internet Portal for Law service.