In March the Law Society launched Catalyst, a new online service enabling searches of its complete catalogue of legal publications dating from the 16th century. The catalogue also contains several specialist indexes compiled by the library enquiry team, covering English and European Union cases, EU documents, Commencements of Statutes, Precedents and Frequently Asked Questions. Catalyst offers much more than bibliographic details; it also provides citations for cases, commencement details of statutes and information on the progress of EU proposals.
It claims to be for solicitors, but in fact is unfriendly to all but the information professional. A few improvements would change that:
- Define the scope of the collections so we know what we’re searching.
- Provide a ‘simple search’ option for the average Joe Solicitor.
- Provide more detail in the hitlists – at least the document date.
- Link directly from each record to a pre-filled online Document Delivery Service order form.
