Nearly all libraries in the Federal Republic of Germany are publicly owned, and their employees are placed in the same position as government servants. Library employees enjoy the same advantages and benefits as persons engaged in other branches of government, and their conditions of service are regulated in effect by the same or similar provisions of law. As the Federal Republic of Germany is a federation of several states (Länder), competence to make laws for the regulation of government employees rests concurrently in the federal legislature and the legislatures of the individual states. In this respect there are separate laws for the regulation of federal employees and the employees of the individual state governments, but for all practical purposes such federal and state laws are substantially similar. The respective laws establish systems of different ranks for government employees and prescribe educational qualifications as well as other requirements for the entry into employment at different service levels. There are no specific federal laws for the education and admission of library employees. According to the laws of the individual states, however, library employees are divided into four categories:

1. (1) Senior library service (Höherer Bibliotheksdienst) which is open to persons with academic qualifications (preference being given to persons with doctoral degrees according to the laws of most states) upon completion of a prescribed period of practical library training and a formal educational course in librarianship.

2. (2) Advanced library service (Gehobener Bibliotheksdienst) which is available to persons who undertake a formal course of study in librarianship (which is different in content from the course established for the senior library service) upon completion of high school education.

3. (3) Intermediate library service (Mittlerer Bibliotheksdienst) which does not require high school education but in several states a formal training in librarianship.

4. (4) Subordinate library service (Einfacher Bibliotheksdienst) which does not require an secondary educational or practical qualifications.

By way of a general guide to readers, who are not familiar with the German system of library positions, it should be added that this classification system does not have precise equivalents in the Anglo-American countries. The senior and to some extent the advanced library services may, however, be compared to professional library positions, and the intermediate and subordinate service levels to supporting staff positions in the United States libraries.

Law libraries in a country represent its legal potential. These testify to law and legal development, place of law in people's mind and life and quality of legal education, in a country. Future legal development and people's attitude towards law, to a great extent, is dependent upon the state of and scope for legal education in a given group. It might be suggested that the law libraries pulsatingly reflect the standard, methods and objectives of legal instruction in a country. Prescribed law courses, level of legal teaching, quality of legal research, expectations and aspirations both of the law teacher and the pupil and priority of emphasis among areas of law, all can be easily ascertained by observing the law libraries of any people.

The Federation of Malaya received her independence from Britain in 1957. On September 16, 1963, the eleven states of this Federation, the former colonies of Sarawak and Sabah on the western coast of Borneo and the State of Singapore united to form Malaysia. In August 1965, however, Singapore seceded from this newly-formed federation to become an independent republic. Malaysia as it is known to-day consists of eleven states of the peninsula that constituted Malaya in 1957, (this is referred to as peninsula Malaysia) Sabah and Sarawak. Peninsula Malaysia is separated from Sabah and Sarawak by the vast South China Sea.

In 1955, Congress commissioned the U.S. Copyright Office to initiate studies on the possibility of a revised copyright law. Thereafter the Copyright Office issued 34 scholarly reports on the various facets of the problem involved. These reports became the basis for copyright revision legislation in the Congress.

Law libraries occupy a unique and, in many respects, an ambiguous status in the United States. This status tends to set them apart in a variety of significant ways from the ubiquitous prototypes of general libraries and, with the possible exception of medical libraries, even from the different categories of specialized libraries in other academic or professional areas. The distinctiveness of law libraries in the United States, which is shared to a greater or lesser extent by many law libraries elsewhere in the world, and especially in countries possessing legal systems based on common law, cannot fully be appreciated by anyone who does not have at least a rudimentary knowledge of the nature and content of law as well as a working familiarity with the idiosyncratic uses of library materials by the legal profession in the exercise of judicial and legislative processes. Unfortunately, the incontro-vertible value of this self-evident requirement if frequently overlooked.

The performance of duties which law librarians consider professional varies in quantity and in quality among different types of law libraries. It is hoped that this small paper will reflect these differences and yet provide information typical enough of American librarians to provide an adequate picture for comparison. Noting the essential differences, this paper will briefly describe the organization of professional law librarians in their jobs and in their relationships with other librarians, their educational status and requirements, and other indicia of professionalism which affect their status. It will undoubtedly reflect the biases of a librarian from a university law library.

It is proposed in this paper to examine the possibility of cooperative acquisition of legal materials among some libraries in the City of Lagos.

American standards for law librarianship have been frequently cited and widely used as guidelines in law library literature. It is understandable how one not fully conversant with the problems inherent in American law librarianship might well regard the present standards with the kind of awe expressed in the above quotation. After all, academic law librarians in the United States have a doubledegree standard of education, possess full faculty rank and status as members of law school faculties, and require certification in accordance with their own professional association standards. Committees of the American Association of Law Libraries are engaged in writing canons of professional ethics for law librarians while another is producing a code of job security. A committee of concerned librarians is dealing with questions of social importance and probing the possible response of law libraries to those issues. The law library literature itself is filled with articles presenting various philosophies of law librarianship. Surveys are taken on topics of constant interest ranging from salary scales and book counts to the very latest topical problems such as sex discrimination. Members even voice concern about the possibilities of unauthorized practice of law in their daily work and raise questions concerning the need for malpractice insurance coverage for reference librarians. Thus, at first glance, it does seem entirely possible to conclude that “everything is up-to-date” in American law librarianship.

Law libraries, like all other types of liberaries, are undergoing a period of rapid change, as a result of the greatly increased production of printed materials, the adaptation to new technology and the introduction of new media. To meet these challenges successfully requires careful planning. Planning inevitably makes one think of the future; the very word ‘plan', which means an organized method according to which something is to be done, is future oriented. However, to appreciate fully the present state of planning for law libraries in Canada, it is helpful first to have some idea of the history of our development. It is a history which indicates that law library service in Canada has been very slow in evolving. This fact, which I had long suspected to be the case, became quite apparent to me when in 1971 I had the occasion to write an article on law libraries in Canada for the Law Library Journal. I will not go into all the historical detail at this time but simply mention the major points.

The international seminar on selected law problems of the European Communities, organized by IALL at the European Academy in Bergisch-Gladbach near Cologne in August 1975, brought out clearly the difficulty, for those external to the secretariats of the different Community institutions, of identifying the source-texts of Community law. Even the Community speakers themselves were not always sure-footed in their passage through the documentary morass. This note is an attempt to set up a few rudimentary signposts.

This is a selective annotated bibliography, in three parts, on the law of the European Communities, confined to separate publications and not listing articles. It tries to assemble a considerable part of the basic literature on Community law as it stands now, and it has been written for those engaged in legal research, teaching, practice and library service, who need more specific and better accessible bibliographic information on the subject than it is now available.