Accession UAA-2012-008 - UAA-2012-008

John A. Weir Memorial Law Library houses the law library collection of the University of Alberta. It is named after John Weir, who was Dean of the Faculty of Law from 1926 to 1942. The Weir Library specializes in primary and secondary materials from common law Anglo-American jurisdictions. Their government document collection includes Canadian federal and provincial government documents including parliamentary, legislative and departmental materials, and administrative decisions.

Initially the University of Alberta law library was housed in the second floor of the south wing of the Arts building. During the 1921-22 school year, students reported in the student newspaper that they had no law library of their own, but were allowed to use the Court House Library. In 1923, the Law Library was installed in Room 206 of the Arts Building. A boom in student enrollment following the Second World War led to changes on campus, including the moving of the law library to a floor of Rutherford Library. By the early 1960s it was known as Weir Memorial Library. In 1964 the Weir Memorial Library was significantly expanded through the acquisition of a much broader range of monographs and journals, and became staffed by professional law librarians.

In 1972 the Law Centre was opened, and the Weir Law Library moved from the top floor of the Rutherford library into a 40,000 square foot facility in this new building. The move was oversaw by Law Librarian Peter Freeman, who later became Chief Librarian at the University of Alberta in 1982. In 1988, a microcomputer lab with twenty-two networked computers was installed in the law library, in order to provide students with up-to-date computer research skills. Today materials are accessible to students in both print and electronic formats.