Law Libraries

Legal Libraries

The first law library in the United States was established by Harvard University in conjunction with the law school in 1817 (Harvard, 2012).  The collection was, at first, very limited but grew to over 8000 volumes by 1840 (2012).  In 1870 the first librarian was hired to manage the collection.  Today Harvard boasts the largest legal collection of any academic institution in the world.   With the growth of law schools in America, legal libraries soon sprang up at universities.

With this growth, law librarians soon found the need to provide an organization to serve their common needs.  Although the American Library Association, founded in 1876, would have seemed the logical choice, these legal librarians deemed their profession too specialized for the broad umbrella of the ALA.  Instead they formed, in 1906, the American Association of Law Libraries.  In an article in the Law Library Journal, Morris Cohen outlined the conceptual goals and philosophy of the legal librarian and the profession in general (Cohen, 1982):

• • A clear preference for association with lawyers and the legal profession, rather than with other librarians and with the total library profession.
• • A deep involvement with providing access to both the primary and secondary sources of legal literature.
• • An obligation to be the primary and constant teacher of the materials and methods of legal research.
• • A primary commitment to providing the maximum service to readers.
• • A pragmatic rather than a scientific approach to the problems of library ad- ministration, particularly in technical services.

As can be seen from points one thru three, the legal library sought to provide its own identity apart from general of other specialized libraries.  Point one in particular clearly states their preference for collaboration of the role of the library.  This made, at the time, some sense.  Their entire client base consisted of law school students, lawyers, judges, and legislators.

Law libraries have not remained static repositories however.  Cohen point out in the same article the changes that have been made since the inception of the AALL (p. 195):

• • The change from a concept of service primarily to the legal profession to a much broader notion of service to all who may need legal information.
• • Change from the law librarian's focus on the traditional book as the central tangible object of our work, to a wider concern with legal information
• • The literature which we administer, and which our readers need, has grown beyond traditional legal sources
• • Technology and technological change have become daily concerns affecting most of the basic functions of the library.
• • There has been a striking increase in interlibrary dependence and cooperation

The first point shows how the clientele of legal information has changed.  Other professions rely on legal research, as well as the general public.  The change from books to legal information is both a function of technology and the growing availability of resources in other media formats.  Technology has had a huge impact on the traditional law library.  The advent of Lexis and digitization of material has moved the printed book format to a minority of some institution holdings.  Lastly, interlibrary loan has seen a tremendous upswing in usage; no one library can hold all of the resources now available.

References

Cohen, M. (1982). Tradition and change in law library goals. Law Library Journal , 75, 

192-197.

Harvard. (2012). History of the Harvard Law School Library. Retrieved March 17, 

2012, from law.harvard.edu: http://www.law.harvard.edu/library/about/history/index.html