Faculty Services:
Purchase Requests, The Collection
Purchase Requests
The Library's Collection Services staff welcome faculty recommendations for book purchases. On request, the Library staff will send notice of the arrival of a new book or route the book directly to a faculty member who has recommended its purchase. A faculty member who wishes to recommend a book purchase should contact Michelle Pearse, Bibliographer for Anglo-American Law, Langdell 111 at (617) 496-2102 or Bridget Reischer, Bibliographer for Foreign & International Law, Langdell 143 at (617) 496-2103.
A faculty member who finds that the collection does not currently support an anticipated research project, course, or program should discuss his or her library needs with Kim Dulin, Associate Librarian for Research Services at (617) 496-3292. When Collection Services staff determines that the Library will develop the collection in a new area, faculty suggestions for building the collection are always welcomed. Because it can take several months to develop a collection to support intensive research, a faculty member should give the Collection Services staff as much time as possible to acquire new materials before he or she needs them.
Collections
The Law Library collection is located in more than one place. The Langdell stacks house current Anglo-American law, including legal materials from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand. Langdell also houses the Library's Islamic law collection. The International Legal Studies (ILS) Library in the Lewis International Law Center houses current legal materials from all other jurisdictions, as well as current international and comparative law.
Most materials in Langdell and ILS are shelved in open stacks accessible to Library patrons. Approximately half the Library's collection, however, is located in closed stacks or in other storage areas. Many materials from closed stacks and on-campus storage areas are readily available upon request. Retrieval of materials stored offsite in the Harvard Depository in Southborough, Massachusetts, generally takes twenty-four hours.
A more detailed description of the Library's collection and arrangement is also available.
Special Collections
The Law Library owns one of the greatest collections of rare law books, manuscripts, and legal art in the world. Because of the rarity, fragility, monetary worth, or special research value of these materials, patrons may use them only in the Root Room, the Special Collections Reading Room, located at the south end of the Langdell Reading Room. Special Collections consists of three units: rare books, manuscripts, and the legal art collection.
The Rare Books Unit contains nearly 300,000 volumes, almost one fifth of the Library's collection. The Library considers any book that was printed before 1850 to be a rare book. Other rare books include Confederate imprints, pre-1701 bound legal manuscripts, English and American trials, pre-Soviet Russian legal materials, Chinese legal materials before 1960, and German and Japanese war crimes trials.
The Manuscripts Unit contains more than one hundred twenty-five collections of the papers of eminent nineteenth- and twentieth-century jurists and legal educators, including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Roscoe Pound, and Erwin Griswold. With more than 1.5 million items, it is one of the nation's major resources for the study of nineteenth- and twentieth-century legal history.
The Art and Visual Materials Collection consists of portraits and prints depicting legal subjects, 60,000 photographs, and a small collection of sculpture and other realia.
Faculty members are encouraged to visit Special Collections and to discuss their research interests with the staff. The staff can also schedule tours for your students or bring materials to the classroom to illustrate a lecture. To make arrangements, call David Warrington, Librarian for Special Collections, (617) 496-2115.
Red Set Archives
The Red Set is an archival collection of Law School faculty publications, selected student papers, Law School publications, and Law School student organization publications. Red Set materials do not circulate; patrons must use them in the Root Room. The Library adds additional copies of most Red Set works to the circulating collection.