Claudia, we are going through the same process right now. The law
collection here is very small, the course is new. I'm sure all the well
supported law libraries in Australia have subscribed to both these titles:
Law Book Company's Laws of Australia, to come out in 32 volumes and
Butterworth's Halsbury's Laws of Australia which will have 30 volumes.
We are probably the only academic law school in the country yet to place
an order for either so, like you, we are looking for comparative assessments.
The Laws of Australia (Law Book) is divided into 35 'schematic titles' ie
subjects and each of those has subdivisions, about 200 or so in all. So
there are not lots of minute topics as in a traditional encyclopedia.
Titles include Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders with subdivisions
such as Constitutional status, Cultural heritage etc. Most titles are
traditional eg Administrative Law, Dispute resolution, Intellectual
property, etc etc. Every part of the work is cross-referenced to The
Australian Digest and is brought up to date by The Australian Legal
Monthly Digest.
Halsbury's Laws of Australia (Butterworth) was launched a few weeks ahead
of the Law Book offering and already has ten volumes published. They
divide the field into ninety subject areas so most volumes will have a
number of subjects eg Aboriginals to Arbitration, Contract to Coroners.
These are the same subject headings as used in Australian Current Law (by
coincidence another Butterworth publication) and recent developments will
be covered in that publication before an update appears for the main
encyclopedic work.
Both of these publications are looseleaf, updates are expected.
The American agents for Law Book are W.W.Gaunt in Florida fax: 813 778
5252 and Hein in N.Y. fax:(716) 883 8100
I don't have a US agent for Butterworths but they are a division of the
Reed International conglomerate so you should be able to locate them.
That's the basic facts about the two. For qualitative assessment and
comparisons you may need to rely on others. I've had varying
recommendations. One suggested that the more holistic and philosophical
treatment in Law Book was better suited to student use. Given that one
reflects the arrangement of Aust. Current Law and the other The Aust. Legal
Monthly Digest it may partly be a matter of which one of those is more
familiar and preferred. If you get any useful comments that come to you
direct and not to the list would you please forward them to me?
Good luck,
-Hugh
Hugh Malcolm email: hm@libserver.canberra.edu.au
Law Librarian tel.: 061 06 201 5279
University of Canberra fax: 061 06 201 5068
P.O. Box 1 Belconnen ACT 2616
Australia
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