Garvie Reading Room - PLE Library

The Garvie Reading Room is a unique collection of historical and current materials on public legal education. The library is based at the Legal Resource Centre in Alberta, Canada and contains a wide range of materials including research, evaluations, programme reports, journals, newsletters and handbooks.

More about Garvie Reading Room

Documents stored in the libray can be found using their online database: Reading Room Catalogue

The Public Legal Education Collection includes the Sandra Garvie Memorial Collection which after being stored by the Legal Resource Centre in 1998 was restored for use in 2008 with funding from The Sandra Garvie Memorial Trust.

Sandra Garvie

The Reading Room is named in honour of the life and contributions of Sandra Garvie, a librarian who was a pioneer in the early development of public legal education theory and practice. In her work at the Legal Resource Centre from 1976 until her untimely death in 1979, she was instrumental in establishing the library collection as one of the pre-eminent public legal education collections in Canada.

Sandra was dedicated to the idea of increasing public access to legal information and to developing the skills of non-lawyers in both using and influencing the legal systems. She brought a high level of competence, energy, innovation and courage to her work.

Legal Resource Centre

The Legal Resource Centre is comprised of a multi-disciplinary team of lawyers, librarians, teachers, and web specialists. The Centre uses a collaborative approach to develop materials and strategies for teaching people about the law.

The Centre hosts a co-operative weblog, ‘Blogosaurus Lex: the evolution of public legal education’

The blog includes updates on new acquisitions to the library, LawNow (a magazine published by the Centre, podcasts, and frequently asked questions (and answers) about legal issues.

August 2010