National collections

The pre-1920 collections are rich in the legal area: and include about 140,000 volumes. Naturally, there is a major German collection, but also many French and Latin titles; the 18^th and especially the 19^th Centuries are heavily represented. The history of law, Roman Law and German Law are all well represented. The BNU also has an exceptional collection of German dissertations, which makes up 20% of pre-1920 works.

The wealth of ancient collections and the constitution of the European excellence centre strongly shape the BNU documentation policy. History of law, foreign rights (particularly German law) and European Union law make up the collections’ major axes of develop. Thus, acquisitions of legal works within the context of the European excellence centre takes on both a strictly legal character and a geographic one.

In its collections, the BNU then takes on a good number of works that deal with communal law, as well as documentation compiled from various national laws from a synthetic perspective on a European level.

Current acquisitions

The BNU has made available for all a basic documentation for use by jurists, academicians (both students and professors,) and professionals, as well as a high-level documentation base for use by those in legal research and legal sciences.

The entire range of legal material is covered. Nevertheless, canonical law is part of Religious Sciences collections and local Alsatian-Mosellan law can be found in the Alsatian collections. The monograph acquisitions, of which there are about 800 additions annually, concerns all levels of university students, starting with the licence. There are 175 current subscriptions to printed legal periodicals, 30 of which deal with Europe. As far as monographs go, like periodicals, the BNU strives to maintain a balance between public and private law.

A good part of the acquisition policy concerns cross-collections that cover all branches of law for all university level: Précis Dalloz, Précis Domat, Codes bleus Litec, Codes Dalloz, etc.

Systematic acquisitions of collections that publish French theses like the LGDJ Bibliothèques makes up a good part of the legal collections at the research level.

The BNU neither acquires general public works, nor, generally speaking, volumes destined for lawyers.

The Library has acquired many upper level university works (for masters and doctoral students), including: French works published in Belgium, works on German law, monographs in German and English mainly in the areas of European or International Law. The BNU thus holds compendiums of German Supreme Court jurisprudence (BGH-Rechtsprechung) and compendiums of English laws. (Halsbury’s Laws of England).

The BNU also provides electronic access to several data bases and electronic journals : the Doctrinal Plus, the JurisClasseur, the Dalloz.fr platform, etc.