Birzeit University Law Center

LIBRARY

At present, there is simply no general public legal library in Palestine. In fact, the private libraries of some Palestinian lawyers, to which most people do not have access, are better than most institutional ones.

The Law Center's library currently has more than 6,000 volumes, of which about a third has already been catalogued using MINISIS, a tri-lingual library system. The Law Center hopes to have more than 20,000 by the year 2000. It also has several CD-ROMs, microfiche, access to the Web, and hopes to shortly have access to international computer legal databases such as LEXIS. Thanks to recent generous donations from private collections of retired Palestinian lawyers and estate holdings, the library already has almost all of the Palestinian primary legal materials (Ottoman, British Mandate, Jordanian, Israeli Military Orders, Palestinian Authority laws) as well as a good starting collection of secondary materials (encyclopedias, textbooks, training manuals) from Arab (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia) and other foreign universities and institutions (France, U.S., Great Britain, Belgium).

Library Materials Required

Despite the positive response to date, we still have a great need for donations of primary materials, textbooks, periodicals, and information technology (CD-ROMs, legal databases), in order to give the Palestinian legal community and society in general, access to the widest possible selection of legal materials. Law schools, research institutes, professional institutions and individuals are invited to offer their own publications (books, collections of periodicals, CD-ROMs, videocassettes) and duplicates of their library holdings.

In particular, we have a great need for:

• statutes, law reports and textbooks from the British Mandate period (1917-1948);
• Israeli statutes, law reports and textbooks (particularly in Arabic and English);
• selected collections of national laws and introductions to national legal systems, including those from Arab countries, Europe, North America, and the Commonwealth;
• collections of international treaties and UN documents;
• textbooks, law reports and articles on international law, comparative law and conflict of laws, human rights and humanitarian law;
• law journals;
• publications of international non-governmental organizations (NGO's) which have published legal materials of relevance to Palestine;
• materials on alternative dispute resolution;
• advocacy and professional training manuals, materials, and videotapes (e.g. mock trials);
• current encyclopedias;
• other reference materials such as dictionaries, bibliographies, indexes and abstracts of periodicals (in paper or CD-ROM form)
• library and information science reference materials and periodicals;
• access to international legal databases (such as LEXIS and WESTLAW),
• CD-ROMS for law journals, legal forms, and encyclopedias

Donors in general are urged to take care of shipment and to get in touch with their respective foreign ministries which may provide assistance. The donation of even one single book is worthwhile. Each gift will be duly acknowledged on the title page. Donations of more than one hundred books are acknowledged on a plaque displayed at the entrance of the library.

Library Fund

Further, monetary donations are greatly appreciated and, if so specified by the donor, will be used to purchase specific textbooks or for subscriptions to specific periodicals and law reports. Also, the financial department of Birzeit is ready to manage a specific standing fund for continuing acquisitions for the library (journals, periodicals, law reports etc.), and donations to this fund are greatly needed.

Donors to the Fund to date include the Swedish branch of the International Commission of Jurists, and His Highness Sheik Hamad Ben Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, whose donation will be used to acquire materials on international law.

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