When I met Ivan Sipkov for the first time at a conference of the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL), he used to speak very fondly about the time in the early forties when he served in Berlin as a member of the diplomatic corps of Bulgaria. So, in his honor, I decided to describe the Berlin scenery as he knew it, and today fifty years later: the streets in the center of Berlin (e.g. Unter den Linden); the university campus of the old Friedrich Wilhelm University known today as the Humboldt University; the Potsdam Square, with the new Staatsbibliothek; and the nice Dahlem campus of the Free University.

The compilation below constitutes a piece of personal history of law librarianship in the German-speaking countries of Austria, Germany and Switzerland. No progress in law libraries has been achieved by chance, but rather through the endeavours of individuals. After having published several German law library directories, the author has in recent years concentrated on compiling data also about the lives of the law librarians who have been and are active in, or originate from, the German-speaking region in Europe. A directory in German of these colleagues who were still alive and active in December 1996 – together with a detailed introduction – has just been published as a Special Issue 1997 of Recht, Bibliothek, Dokumentation (RBD), the official publication of AjBD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft für juristisches Bibliotheks- und Dokumentationswesen), the law library association in the German-speaking countries.

The main research responsibility of the Law Library of Congress is to serve as the research arm of the United States Congress for the study of the legal systems of other countries. The studies, reports, and briefings its specialists prepare provide a worldwide perspective to the Congress on particular legal issues. This type of work can generally be described as comparative law research.

The significance of cultural property as “a basic element of civilization and national culture” and its interchange among countries for scientific, cultural and educational purposes has been acknowledged in a number of legal instruments prepared under the aegis of UNESCO, an intergovernmental organization dedicated to the preservation of the world's cultural heritage. As the Preamble of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property asserts: “… [the interchange] increases the knowledge of the civilization of man, enriches the cultural life of all peoples and inspires mutual respect and appreciation among nations.” Moreover, the 1995 adopted UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects further attests to the: “…fundamental importance of the protection of cultural heritage and of cultural exchanges for promoting understanding between peoples, and the dissemination of culture for the well-being of humanity and the progress of civilization.”

As a glance at his bibliography shows, Dr. Sipkov, as well as a law librarian, was a publicist in the original sense of the term — a scholar of public, in particular public international, law. It is therefore fitting that our comment deals with a basic issue that arises at the intersection of international law and librarianship. We would like to evoke the problem of defining and then finding the “material sources” of customary international law. That means understanding, then locating, the concrete, usually documentary, materials that must be used to confirm the existence of a state practice. The consistent, generalized, though not necessarily universal, practice of states forms the objective element of a customary rule. This basic problem of international legal research is not new, but as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations International Law Commission, it makes sense to examine it again. Developments over the last half century should help in understanding how we try currently to solve the difficulties and will do so in the future.

This empirical study starts from the newest medium, the internet, and explains briefly what researchers can expect to find there in terms of legal information, and how to find the needed information. It focuses on U.S. legal information, but also touches on foreign and international law. It includes comparisons with other legal research platforms and raises a few issues.