In August 1977 approximately 70 members of the International Association of Law Libraries representing 16 different countries gathered at Budapest, Hungary to attend the 6th IALL Seminar. The topic for this seminar dealt with “Socialist Law and its Legal Literature”, with papers presented by representatives of the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, Poland, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The Seminar was hosted by the Hungarian Library of the Parliament and its Director, Dr. Gabor Valyi, as well as his colleagues. At the seminar I was designated as its reporter by the IALL and assigned the task of presenting the substance of the course content to the rest of the IALL membership. For reasons of economy and space, it is not possible to reproduce each article verbatim as it was written and delivered. It is hoped that the edited or abstracted versions as they are set forth below are successful in reciting the salient features and substance of each paper. For those who are interested in obtaining the full text of the papers, it is expected that these will be commercially available.

This paper is essentially an abridged version of the Final Report of the Society of Public Teacher's of Law (S.P.T.L.) Working Party on Law Publishing, presented in August 1977. The Working Party was established in May 1974 with the following terms of reference, “To investigate the problems of law publishing as they bear on legal scholarship and legal research and to make recommendations”, and its aim was to represent the interests of teachers, students, researchers and authors concerned with all levels of academic law in the British Isles. Although our findings are not specifically related to the task of the law librarian I hope that members of the International Association of Law Libraries will be interested in this view of law publishing from the perspective of the legal academic profession. It should be made clear that this study was not conceived of as a project of pure academic research into the British law book trade, rather, as the tenor of the paper will reveal, its purpose was to stimulate a greater awareness of the problems facing publishers, authors and educators and to define some possible strategies for the different groups concerned. The Working Party has therefore seen its role as twofold. Its first function was to investigate and analyse the current situation in law publishing in the light of the problem created by inflation. It was felt that rising costs and prices were likely to have a serious effect on publication of some important types of scholary and educational material which were not immediately commercially attractive and also on levels of provision of books and other material in libraries and for students generally. Information was sought by questionnaire, correspondence and interview from different groups involved in the production and consumption of academic legal literature (publishers, periodical editors, librarians and lecturers) and from other bodies and individuals concerned with the general problems of academic publishing. In the course of our investigations it became apparent that the Working Party could perform a number of useful functions beyond that of pure research. In the final year of its existence it has, therefore, adopted a slightly more active policy. It has seen its second function as that of stimulating activity on the problems themselves, through advice to the academic legal community on the publication of their work, through encouragement of further research projects in specific areas and through discussion with publishers, editors and others involved in the production of legal material. Its advisory role is reflected in the series of separate working papers on aspects of law publishing and production of materials.

Recognizing the high value of information and knowledge, as well as the need for a safe and efficiently retrievable storage of the records of such knowledge, the Congress of the United States established some years ago an independent agency known as the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. This agency was entrusted with the responsibility of developing and recommending a plan leading to the improvement of library and information services in the United States. Its work has progressed slowly. Various committees and task forces have been appointed, and they are in the process of conducting their investigations and preparing their reports.

The borrowing of materials by one library from another library, i. e., interlibrary loan, has been the traditional means of increasing patron access to items not available locally. The explosion of publications and other informational materials in recent years, as well as the continuing inflationary spiral in costs have played havoc on libraries in the United States. There is now almost universal recognition that more drastic changes to provide effective library services are needed. Although complete statistics of national interlibrary loan traffic for all libraries are not available, the number of interlibrary loans probably exceeds 10 million annually. Statistics published by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) show that its 99 member libraries made 2,158,000 interlibrary loans during the year 1974–75, whereas in the same period, these same large university, national, and special research libraries borrowed 477,000 items from other libraries. While interlibrary loan, as viewed by librarians, was intended to be approximately an evenly balanced reciprocal lending and borrowing operation among libraries – achieving a quid pro quo – these statistics indicate that balanced reciprocity is not often achieved.

The seat of the Federal Court is Lausanne, not Bern which is the capital of Switzerland. Since the capital is located in the German-speaking part of the country, the French-speaking city of Lausanne was primarily chosen as seat of the Court to establish a major governmental institution in French-speaking Switzerland. That the Court is purposely located here, is also thought to strengthen its independence from the other branches of government.

Among the many old and new actors on the international stage of nations the United States is one of the most active and most important. The U.S. is a member of most existing intergovernmental organizations, participates in hundreds upon hundreds of international conferences and meetings every year and, in conducting her bilateral and multilateral relations with the other members of the community of nations, contributes very substantially to the development of contemporary international law. The Government of the United States has a policy of promptly informing the public about developments in its relations with other countries through a number of documentary publication, issued by the Department of State

The following selected bibliographical summary contains a compilation of the material by the individual countries. Abbreviations used for distinguishing the individual countries concerned: Bulg. = People's Republic of Bulgaria; Czechosl. = Czechoslovak Socialist Republic; Germ. = German Democratic Republic; Hung. = Hungarian People's Republic; Pol. = Polish People's Republic; Rum. = Socialist Republic of Rumania; USSR = Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; Yug. = Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. In order to facilitate identification, the titles are given in the language of the original publication, with an English or French translation of the title in the required cases.