In 1830 Alexis de Tocqueville managed to be sent on an extensive trip to the United States in order to study new world penal institutions. His main interest was the culture and civilization of the United States rather than its jails. Although he conscientiously investigated the penitentiaries and subsequently wrote a report, he considered democracy to be the real subject of his study.

When the topic for this paper was first proposed to this author, the exact suggestion was “to write about the language problem as a barrier to publication of legal works in developing countries and their international distribution.” This author must hasten, then, to add that he makes no claim to being an expert in languages and linguistics; however, he does claim some familiarity with foreign languages and foreign law, does have strong interests in these areas, and therefore agreed to attempt such a paper. If he misuses exact linguistic terminology or commits some unwitting faux pas, he begs the reader's indulgence and hopes thereby to avoid igniting any language warfare or great intellectual brou-ha.

When I was first contacted by the program chairman to present a paper at the 1976 Conference of the International Association of Law Libraries he very suavely suggested that my paper should deal “with some important aspect of the legal literature in Latin America.” I then tried to compile bibliographies of articles dealing with law libraries in Latin America. Unfortunately, I was unable to find more than a handful of articles, some in Spanish and others in English and these were not of much help. Those in Spanish dealt generally with straight theory and some also dealt with the devising of a viable methold of classification. Having catalogued and classified three law libraries in the United States, I feel that a speech on this subject might be of interest to a gathering of Latin American Law Librarians although inappropriate at this Conference.

I would like to start by having a brief look at the basic aims of a librarian before relating them to the specific title under discussion, namely, the old adage: “the right book (or information) to the right person at the right time”. It is to this end that we practice our technical skills of book selection, cataloguing and classification, information retrieval, etc. In titling this paper “law libraries: a community service” I am aware that I am introducing an unusual juxtaposition of ideas. A law library is generally considered to be an esoteric service for a professional elite rather than one intended for the benefit of the community as a whole, but if a community is in need of this type of service then surely it is up to us to provide it. In this paper I want to introduce a completely new concept into law librarianship and suggest, that this is what is needed in Africa today.

As regards legal literature and its bibliographical description many developing countries are not as underdeveloped as some people in this continent may believe. In various countries of the Third World legal bibliographies have been published (partly with, partly without development aid) which need not shy from being compared with works of the same kind published in Europe. Nevertheless, these bibliographies tend to remain obscure – a fact for which one cannot blame the developing countries. In the course of his education the average jurist in the West becomes acquainted only with the law of his own country. Occasional comparative studies are generally confined to the other European legal systems and to Anglo-Saxon law. In exceptional cases he may also deal with some East European law. Librarians and documentalists get acquainted with a great many bibliographies during their studies, but in general with none dealing with developing countries. For these reasons information experts, lawers and persons assisting in developing countries – having to deal with the legal literature of a developing country for some reason – often do not know whether they must discover all the relevant literature themselves or whether there are – and if so, in what cases – bibliographies already in existence and how to use these bibliographies.

Application of automated processing (ADP) became self evident in recent times in nearly all technical and scientific disciplines. In this field, too, jurisprudence is the “tail light” in development – perhaps apart from some pure theoretical subjects. It has always been difficult for the legal procedure to employ technical innovations and regulate their legal consequences in a convenient and suitable way. No wonder that too often development passed the lawyers by and those normally came too late to have directing influence. Opposite to this in a surprisingly short time-lag (for lawyers) the (social-)legal problematic connected with the installation of ADP was recognized at least at the start. Early – in the middle of the sixties – out of the scattered single efforts a new field of science was built up in outlines: legal informatics. It can be defined as the discipline that contains the mutual context of ADP and law, i. e., all questions of application of ADP in jurisdiction and administration (automation of law): on the other hand new legal problems, however, arose with the application of ADP (law of automation).

In the ideal law book market place publishers would flourish, libraries would grow and producers and consumers would have no need for an umpire in the guise of a federal regulatory agency.