Collections

BOOK COLLECTION :

The book collection - its first volumes acquired by gift from the Attorney General of the West Indies Federation Library in mid 1970 - now numbers in excess of 97,000 volumes. Significant benefactors include the British Overseas Development Administration, the Canadian Bar Association, the Caribbean Law Institute (CLI), Ford Foundation, University of Virginia Law Library, York University Law Library, and most of the Commonwealth Caribbean Governments.

The collection can satisfy most of the ordinary research needs of the region. Its content reflects the West Indian common law legal heritage. Included are most of the statutes, law reports, texts, law revision commission reports, etc. of the major Commonwealth countries as well as a basic selection of American legal materials. Strong points are the English and Canadian sections. The Law Library subscribes to approximately 620 legal periodicals - 400 of which are law reports, statutes, digests, citators, etc.

The collection's unique feature is the West Indian section, including approximately 20,000 unreported West Indian cases, theses, and research papers produced by staff and students. The library also has one of the most extensive collections of West Indian legislation in existence, including pre-1900 laws of the region which have been acquired on microfilm. The Law Library received substantial grants from the UWI Board for Postgraduate Studies to fund this project in co-operation with the Department of History, the Main Library, Cave Hill, UWI, the Archives Department and the Barbados Public Library.

The Library aims at providing a legal reference service for practitioners and researchers in general, in addition to supporting the teaching programmes at the Faculty of Law where approximately 425 students, including postgraduate students, are registered. LEXIS, an online, full-text databank of legal information from the U.K., the U.S.A., the European Community, and certain Commonwealth countries, was made available to library users in the 1987/88 academic year. From the 1996/97 academic year the Law Library has also had access to QUICKLAW which is an online, full-text databank of Canadian law and WESTLAW, the largest U.S. legal databank after LEXIS. In-house databases of West Indian legislation and cases are currently being created.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AIDS

The law library compiles and distributes quarterly lists of West Indian legislation and material catalogued and added to the collection. Staff members also produce bibliographies from time to time. Copies of these are available in the library for consultation.

METHODS OF ACCESS TO THE COLLECTION

All material in the Law Library is recorded in the online catalogue and can be accessed by one or more of the following heads: author (personal or corporate), subject, title, editor, compiler, translator, series.

The Author field records entries by name, the person or corporate body responsible for the work in question. It also contains entries for titles, editors, compilers, translators and series, where such entries would contribute to the location of the material. All Periodicals are listed under their title.

The Subject field records the subject or subjects dealt with. A 'See' reference link in the catalogue indicates that a given word or phrase is not used as a subject in this catalogue, but that the user should look under another term (e.g. FAMILY see also PARENT AND CHILD).

Textbooks and Periodicals listed in the catalogue can be found by checking the call number, i.e. the group of letters and numbers. Each record has a location field e.g. stamp, REPORTS, STATUTES, etc. or REPORTS, STATUTES SECTION.

Items showing RESERVE must be requested at the Circulation Desk.

The system of classification adopted by this library is the Moys Classification Scheme, which is in common usage in English Law Libraries. Books are grouped by subject, with an alphabetical symbol assigned to each. To view an outline of the list of classes, click here.

WEST INDIAN UNREPORTED JUDGMENTS

West Indian unreported judgments can be accessed online through CARILAW.

RESERVE COLLECTION

The Reserve Collection is located behind the Public Services Desk. It consist of recommended books and materials particularly relevant to courses offered by the Faculty, xeroxed articles and cases, LL.B and LL.M theses, past exam papers, indices to West Indian statutes (WILIP Indexes), and Constitutions. The Caribbean Law Review, West Indian Law Journal and current issues of legal periodicals and law reports (e.g. All England Reports, Weekly Law Reports) also form part of this collection.

Reserve Collection material is available for loan either for use in the reading room or overnight. Material which may be loaned overnight is identified by a red strip on the spine of the item. Reserve material for reading room use only is identified by a yellow strip; judgments by a blue strip, and theses by a yellow and blue strip. These reserve materials are not available for loan.

Special Collections

The Special Collections include a Tax Law Center the largest regional collection of unreported cases from Commonwealth Caribbean Courts and microfilms of pre-1900 Commonwealth Caribbean laws dating back to 1639.