Columbia Library columns (v.2(1952Nov-1953May))

(New York :  Friends of the Columbia Libraries.  )

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  v.2,no.3(1953:May): Page 27  



The Editor Visits the Law Library                   27

so exciting to students that they have to be kept in a special re¬
served section to prevent their being "read to pieces" !

We emerged from the stacks—and the past—into the busy pres¬
ent of the reading rooms. Not far from where we had examined
the case-records of the fourteenth century we found students
consulting U.S. Supreme Court decisions of the day before yester¬
day: decisions handed down on Monday, and received at the
Library Wednesday morning!

Up-to-the-minute services such as this are expensive, and in the
office of Miles Price, the Law Librarian, we learned something of
the financial woes of this Library. Until 1949 the Library had
managed to keep its great collections in the fields of domestic,
foreign and international law in good shape. The difficult financial
position of the University forced it to cut the Library appropria¬
tion that year. Although some of this cut has been restored, the
appropriation for law books is less today than it was fifteen years
ago. Yet the material necessary in some areas—for example, inter¬
national law—has greatly increased, while at the same time the cost
of books and overhead has sky-rocketed. We were shown a posi¬
tively tragic document prepared by the Library Committee, which
in May, 1951, outlined the restrictions henceforth to be applied to
Law Library acquisitions. While every effort was to be made to
supply present teaching needs, the research collections in many
areas, including a number of foreign countries hitherto kept up to
date, were not,to be further developed. There was no mistaking
the emotion behind the Law Librarian's comments on Columbia's
slide from second to third place among University Law Libraries,
and on the dismal prospect of a further decline should the emer¬
gency aid from the Dean's Fund and Alumni Contributions begin
to falter.

We, too, felt depressed when we contrasted this state of affairs
with the past achievements of the Library, not least of which was
the building up of the best law library catalogue extant. Further¬
more, no law library in the country has served more distinguished
  v.2,no.3(1953:May): Page 27