Issues and Trends of Collection Development of East Asian Law in the United States

Abstract

This paper will first delineate the general policy and guidelines for developing foreign and transnational law collections in U.S. law libraries. It will then analyze factors which shape their East Asian collections, such as the law libraries’ preservation and digitization efforts and their related cost-efficiency, faculty and student interests, and the availability and quality of English translations. In the sections entitled “Basic Collection Materials and Trends of East Asian Countries,” print and electronic resources for conducting research in the laws of Republic of Korea, Japan and China, as well as those of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, are comprehensively surveyed. Lastly, the concluding section explores the pressing issues, current trends and challenges in developing South Korean, Chinese and Japanese law collections in an academic law library in the United States.

Keywords: international law, foreign law, China, Chinese, Japan, Japanese, Korea, Korean, collection, library, libraries, issues, trends, Northeastern, Yale, Michigan, Hawaii, foreign law collection, international law collection, research, legal research, East Asian law research, foreign law research