Collections Overview
The School of Law Library, with over 620,000 volumes, serves not only as a library for the law community but also the university and the local legal community. The law library relies increasingly on electronic sources of legal information while continuing to develop and maintain in-house collections of print and other resources to support research and scholarship. All materials in the collections are indexed in the Duke University online catalog, which also provides access to electronic journals, databases and internet resources.
The library collection is a major research resource featuring comprehensive coverage of
basic United States primary source materials: reported decisions of federal and state courts, current and retrospective collections of federal and state codes and session laws, and regulatory materials accessible electronically and in print.
The extensive and continuously expanding collection of legal treatises covers all areas of law, as well as history, economics, government and other disciplines with strong intersections to law. Special treatise collections are maintained in several areas, including the George C. Christie collection in jurisprudence and the Floyd S. Riddick collection of autographed senatorial material, and the Cox Legal Fiction collection.
The periodical collection includes extensive runs of all major law journals, bar association publications, institute proceedings, and newsletters. The library is a selective depository for United States government publications, with concentration on congressional and administrative law materials and maintains extensive holdings for historical and current materials in alternative formats.
In addition to its Anglo-American holdings, the library holds substantial research collections in foreign and international law. The foreign law collection is extensive in coverage, with long-standing concentrations in European law and business law materials, and growing collections in Asian and Latin American law. The international law collection is strong in primary source and treatise material on both private and public international law topics.