Welcome to
The Faculty of Law Library
University of the West Indies
by Professor, The Hon. Senator Velma Newton, SCM
Law Librarian

The mission of the Faculty of Law Library is to provide legal information, both in print and electronic formats, for students and staff of the Faculty of Law and to provide reference and other assistance to other users of legal information such as governmental departments and members of the legal profession in the Commonwealth Caribbean.

The library is centrally located within the Faculty of Law and forms an integral part thereof.  its collection, which now exceeds 125, 000 volumes, is well known as the foremost repository of the legal materials of the Commonwealth Caribbean. The library has also provided access to a number of international legal databases and is in the process of creating its own.

Thus in 2001, the Law Library commenced a digitization project project which led to the establishment of CARILAW (Caribbean Law Online) which is a database of Commonwealth cases, statutes and treaties dating back to the 1950's.  That project was funded by USAID for three years.  Yet another database, this time of the trade laws of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (the OECS), was launched in late 2004.  It was funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) through the Organisation of American States.  The OECS Trade Law database was the direct result of a request from the states included in this sub-regional grouping for speedy access by their private sectors to the text of their own laws when they were negotiating with external bodies such as the World Trade Organisation.  The Law Library also plans to digitize the indexes to regional legislation produced under its West Indies Legislation Indexing Project for 18 regional jurisdictions.

The Library is staffed by four professionals and 12 full time clericals.  There are a varying number of bibliographies and other works, mainly on the law of the Commonwealth Caribbean, for the assistance of legal researchers.

We look forward to sharing our resources with you and urge you to visit when next you are at, or near to the Cave Hill Campus.