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placed under the Judiciary and renamed the State
Law Library (Chapter 128, Laws of 1978)
Besides meeting the legal information needs of
the State's appellate courts and other branches of
State government and serving as a resource center
for circuit court libraries throughout the State, the
Library is open to the public and encourages the
use of its extremely valuable reference resources,
including laws, general reference materials. State
and federal government documents, and State and
local histories and genealogies With a total collec-
tion of close to 300,000 volumes, the Library offers
the researcher access to a unique information
resource The collection, basically corn posed of ref-
erence material, does nor circulate, except to State
agency personnel Much of the collection, however,
is available on mterlibrary loan and photocopy
facilities are available to patrons
Legal materials constitute the mapr part of the
collection They include reported court decisions
from all appellate jurisdictions across the country
and Great Britain Legislative enactments, both in
session law form and as statutory compilations, also
are filed in the Library from almost every state, as
are ail federal and some foreign statutes The
Library's legal periodical holdings include 500 cur-
rent subscriptions from all major law schools and
many bar associations and commercial publishers
In addition, there is a strong and growing collection
of legal texts and topical loose leaf reporting ser-
vices, briefs and record extracts from the U S
Supreme Court and Maryland's appellate courts,
along with the other legal reference materials found
in most law libraries
The State and federal government document
collection is a vast trove of valuable information
The Library has been a select U S government
depository for federal agency and congressional
publications for many years As a result, it has
collected and indexed thousands of reference pub-
lications in the areas of social sciences, economics,
law enforcement, legislative histories, and

numerous other disciplines The Library also is a
depository for all Maryland State agency publica-
tions and contains one of the most complete
retrospective collections of State government infor-
mation in Maryland In addition, all county govern-
ments must file copies of their codes with the State
Law Library
A third distinct subject collection and a much
used resource is the local history and genealogy
collection This resource, developed over two cen
runes, complements much of the original source
material available for research at the State Archives
and Maryland Historical Society Included in the
collection are Maryland census schedules from
1776 through 1910 with name indexes through
1850, a complete run of die Baltimore Sun (1837
to date), and numerous county histories, family
genealogies, and research guides
Additional items of interest are the Library's
holdings of rare books and early Maryland maps
and documents, including the subscription edition
of James Audubon's four-volume elephant folio,
Birds of America Also on display in the Library are
the classic lithograph prints of each of the official
state birds for thirty five states and the American
Bald Eagle, commissioned by the Nature Society
and painted by Richard Sloane The State Law
Library was designated as the official depository for
these prints by the Governor in 1970
The Library publishes a monthly hst enoded
Recent AcqutJitwns, as well as miscellaneous bibliog-
raphies and a descriptive brochure on the Library
The Library Committee, which acts as the
governing board of the Library is composed of at
least three members, appointed by the Court of
Appeals The Committee's powers include appoint-
ment of a director of the Library appropriate rule-
making, and purchase authorization for new tides
(Code Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article,
sees 13-502,13-503)