Building a Transsystemic Law Library Collection

The Faculty of Law of McGill University decided to take an unprecedented step in 1999 in replacing the approach of training to undergraduate law students with the creation of a new legal education curriculum referred to as ?transsystemic legal education.? This unique program, geared towards all undergraduate McGill Law students, consists of learning two legal systems, including civil and common law in a comparative and interdisciplinary approach. This article discusses how the law library at McGill had to break from a traditional approach of building a law library collection regarding the practice of Canadian law to acquire the scholarly material needed by professors and students. This meant a complete rethinking of the collection development profile with an increased focus on multilingual legal material from Europe and other legal jurisdictions worldwide, and could only be done with a good collaboration between the library and the faculty members.