Commercial and Property Law Textbooks Collections: Accreditation Issues and Imperatives for Law Libraries

Investigations into the development of commercial and property law textbooks (local and foreign) collections, an accreditation requirement in the South East Universities in relation to the Council of Legal Education standards were carried out. The scope consists of 98 titles of local and foreign commercial and property law textbooks listed by Council of Legal Education as accreditation bench mark and involves seven law faculty libraries in the universities South East Geopolitical zone of Nigeria that offer law programme. The areas covered include Company Law and Practices, Law of Insurance, Business Law and Banking, Taxation Law, Copyrights Law and Land/Property Law. The instrument for data collection was the standard check list released by Council of Legal Education. This check list was found appropriate and adopted for this study. Two research questions were formulated for the study. The findings revealed that only NnamdiAzikiwe University law library in the zone met the Council of Legal Education accreditation standards in Law of Insurance in commercial law textbooks collections. Recommendations were made which include among others the need for periodic assessment of collections, constant review and revision of the list. Keywords: Law Library, library collections, accreditation, commercial law, property Law standards