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THE USES AND ORDERING OF LAW LIBRARIES 1

1

THE following notes are those not of a librarian but an outsider. Having found my way into this good company under colour of being the librarian of the Alpine Club, I am permitted to remember (what perhaps in strict regularity I should have forgotten at the door) that in another capacity I am a member of that class of readers who make use of Law Libraries, and that in fact I have constantly done so for a good many years. The place and circumstances of this meeting may be deemed to justify me in putting before you some of the reflections and desires begotten of that experience. Even where I use general language, I shall be understood to be speaking of the constitution and working of an English or AngloAmerican law library; and, so far as these notes have any practical object, to be thinking especially of the libraries of the Inns of Court. One of those libraries (Lincoln's Inn) I know, as a reader, pretty well; of

1 Read at the Annual Meeting of the Library Assocation in London, 1886. So far as I know, the Inns of Court libraries are now (1890) exactly where they were then.

the Inner Temple I know something; I have merely visited the libraries of the Middle Temple and Gray's Inn.

By a law library I do not mean merely a collection of law books, but a collection of books ordered and maintained for the special purpose of being useful to workers in the profession and science of the law. Such workers are either

1. Novices in the law, "students" in the particular technical sense of the Inns of Court.

2. Practising lawyers in search of information and authorities, to be used for the purposes of their professional business.

3. Writers and teachers collecting materials for critical, dogmatic, or historical exposition.

To a considerable extent, but not altogether, the needs of these classes coincide. The requirements of the commencing student are limited within an easily defined range; those of the practitioner are wider, but in the general run of work they too are within ascertained limits; but the practitioner in extraordinary cases, and the critical inquirer in almost every branch of his undertaking, should have at command many and various kinds of information, often such kinds as at first sight would not be suspected of having anything to do with law. Thus a collection of all the law books ever published would not be an efficient law library. To make a good law library we must have a good collection of law books,

and a good selection of other books with a view to the special purposes in hand.

Again, the task is not like that of forming a library in the interest of any other special science. Chemistry, physics, and astronomy, for instance, are treated of in all the languages of the civilised world, with certain differences of terms and other diversities in detail; but the things signified and the fundamental ideas are the same throughout. The results obtained by a French geometer or a German chemist are equally valid for the whole world. The tongues and even the methods may be diverse (thus we stand alone in still resting geometrical instruction on the text of Euclid), but the science is one. In law we have another and less facile state of things: there is not one system but several systems, like one another in some respects and unlike in others, producing more or less analogous results, which may or may not have any definite connection with one another. There is not a French chemistry which an English chemist has to learn. Dr. Williamson needs no interpreter beyond knowledge of the French language to exchange ideas with M. Berthelot. But an English lawyer who has to consider a question of French law finds himself in the presence not only of new terms but of new ideas. He is on the whole less likely to misunderstand them than an Englishman who is not a lawyer, but that is all. Only under specially favourable conditions can a lawyer hope really to know any system besides his own. In a perfectly ordered law library there would be an adequate representation of all existing legal

systems, having due regard to their respective practical importance and to the general scale of the establishment. But it is evidently very difficult to bring together the special technical and literary knowledge needful to ensure that this should be first performed and afterwards maintained.

We have to add that the books of ordinary use must be freely accessible to readers (as is the case in the Inns of Court), or else there must be an abundant and well trained staff. No lawyer can tell, when he goes into a library, how many books he may want to refer to before he comes out. One reference leads to others, and a new line of search may be disclosed at any moment. Moreover, the number of volumes necessarily consulted, in proportion to the use made of each volume, is probably greater in an English lawyer's work than in any other kind of literary work whatever.

Thus law libraries have to provide a highly special kind of service; they have also to provide for somewhat exacting readers. Practising lawyers are apt to be in haste, and expect to be able to lay hands on what they want in the shortest possible time. They do not indeed care, as a rule, for the minuter matters of scholarship and bibliography; but the critical students of legal literature, though a minority, can give quite enough trouble in that kind to make up for the omissions of their brethren.

So much being premised, let us see what are the necessary departments of an English law library. They may be described roughly thus:

(a) Works of general reference.

(b) Cosmopolitan literature under such heads asi. Roman law (with its offshoots in modern civil and canon law).

ii. Philosophy of law.

iii. Historical and comparative jurisprudence. iv. International law.

(c) English law literature, under such heads asi. Text-books.

ii. Reports and statutes. iii. Historical documents. (d) American law literature. (e) Foreign law literature. (f) Legal bibliography. (g) Catalogue.

To take the last point first, I hold a good classified catalogue or subject-index to be almost indispensable ; and it should be revised if not made by a lawyer, so as not to omit the catchwords that a lawyer naturally looks for, nor insert headings unknown to the language of the law. Among the best examples in this kind is the catalogue of the library of the German Reichstag at Berlin (1882). I may also mention the subject-index of the Law Library of the State of New York (Albany, N.Y., 1883), which includes references to articles in periodicals. For Anglo-American purposes, however, I think it is better to have an alphabetical catalogue with a separate subject-index than to put one's trust in a class catalogue.

One advantage of a pretty full