Brief history of the governmental law libraries in the 19th century Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to provide a historical overview of the government law libraries created in Rio de Janeiro during the 19th century. To this end, based on the History of Books and Libraries, the methodology used was the analysis of nineteenth-century documentary sources (such as Almanak Laemmert) and legislation of the period that indicated the existence of libraries of this type in legal organizations - both during the imperial period as in the beginning of the republican regime. At the same time, references about specialized libraries, law libraries and the history of law libraries were consulted in order to promote a dialogue with document sources. Through the survey carried out, it was possible to verify the presence of six government law libraries that began their activities during the nineteenth century: the brazilian Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate, the Ministry of Justice and the State Court of Justice from Rio de Janeiro (all of them created during the Empire); the Federal Supreme Court and the Federal Court of Accounts (both established in the first years of the Republic).