Law may be considered as an intellectual construction and thus an object of theoretical study or as a social science and thus to be studied in its social setting or it may be considered as a technique. Whatever view may be taken, it is suggested that the raison d'être of the law is to bring about the greatest measure of peace and justice. It is this which gives it its greatest importance and its dignity. Whatever view may be taken however, and for whatever purpose the law may be either studied or applied, it is undeniable that its study and application will become more effective by an increase of information about it.

The IALL BULLETIN has become the International Journal of Law Libraries. Is this merely a change of names, or the final farewell to the long familiar white-and-blue publication which, for many years, has been the primary link between the members of the growing IALL family that it has helped create and shape?

Law libraries are the stepchildren of legal and general library literature. This observation made by Kurt Schwerin a decade ago is still valid in the Federal Republic of Germany. No comprehensive publications exist to describe the history, current status or the prospective tasks of our law libraries. The few articles published on the topic describe only one library or one group of libraries. The reports published by juridical institutes often contain useful information on the respective libraries. Another source of information on law libraries may be found in the guides published by several law libraries to facilitate the use of their holdings.

Dr. Dahlmanns' invitation to Australian Law Librarians to tell the world about their activities in this issue of the International Journal of Law Libraries has been welcomed by the eight librarians to whom it was sent. Three of them, at least, have been happy to let me speak for them. The history of the Australian Law Librarians' Group is almost inextricably wound up with my personal history as a law librarian. While I apologise for being autobiographical this course of action is unavoidable if the true history of the A.L.L.G. is to be written.

The history of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (C.A.L.L.) has many parallels with the history of the International Association as set out by Dr. Dahlmanns in No. 28 of this Bulletin. The year 1960 seems to have been a turning point in law library development in Canada and the decade following it was a period of rapid and extensive growth both in the number of law libraries and in the size and scope of their collections. Before 1960 the possibility of a law library organization had been discussed, but in 1960 it became a reality. Under the guidance of Eunice Beeson, the newly appointed law librarian at the Dalhousie University Law School in Halifax, C.A.L.L. first came into being as a chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries. Eunice brought with her to Canada valuable experience in the American organization and she lost no time in getting the five or six widely scattered Canadian law librarians into touch with one another in a way in which they could work together on common projects and share similar concerns. She drafted the constitution of the organization, articulated ideas for co-operative ventures, and indicated practical ways of achieving what had to be done. Her death in the spring of 1966 was a great loss, but she had laid a firm foundation for the future development of the Association.

At a conference on Law Librarianship held at Harrogate in 1968 the question of forming some sort of Association was tentatively discussed. It was felt by all present that there was need for an association that could bring law librarians together to discuss aspects of their work and so provide a common pool of experience and knowledge in which all who were interested might share. It was also suggested by some that the Association should become a group within an existing organisation and that membership should be confined accordingly. This, however, was not thought advisable for to do so would have meant excluding from membership almost all the great law libraries of the British Isles as well as the majority of their staffs. It would also have meant excluding many potential members from the smaller libraries, particulary those of a professional nature. And this itself would have been a negation of one of the principal purposes of the association, which was to embrace all who were interested in law librarianship, who worked professionally in law libraries and who were concerned with improvements in everything which tended to their administration and their service they offered.

On February 20th, 1960, the Dutch Group of law libraries was founded through the initiative of Dr. L. E. van Holk of Leyden University. Prof. Dr. B. Landheer of the Peace Palace Library (who was the editor of the IALL BULLETIN from its very beginning, i.e. September 1960) became the first President.

From time to time during the past several years many law librarians in the United States with institutional commitments for the development of foreign and international law collections have voiced their deep concern about the intrinsic research value of their existing holdings of foreign and international law materials and, even more so, about the ability of their libraries to maintain the future growth of such collections at a sufficiently high scholarly level. Their disquietude was not without a reason. The United States could always pride itself in having several distinguished law libraries with some of the best research collections of legal materials in the world. The reputation of these collections was so great that generation after generation of legal scholars did much of their research work in them. There were also many other law libraries in the United States but they were generally small and did not specialize in foreign and international law. An unexpected development occured, however, in the two decades after World War II. Many of the smaller law libraries as well as a number of new libraries began to expand their holdings at a phenomenal rate of growth. They began also to branch out into areas they had not been previously familiar with, and some of them succeeded in establishing sizable collections of foreign and international law materials within the relatively short period of less than twenty years. After several decades of this unprecedented and frequently indiscriminate expansion, culminating in the emergence of a wide variety of foreign and international law collections, many of these libraries were suddenly faced in the early 1970's with a series of critical problems.