Exploring the Rare Book Collections of the Nahum Gelber Law Library

By Farane Zaidi, a 2^nd year McGill Master of Information Studies student, who completed a special collections practicum at the Nahum Gelber Law Library during the winter 2026 semester.

There is something strangely surreal about handling a book printed over five hundred years ago in the middle of an ordinary weekday afternoon.

Or at least, that is how I felt each time I opened a book that had survived centuries of travel and ownership only to end up on the second floor of the Nahum Gelber Law Library. Behind the doors of the Peter M. Laing Room sits collections of thousands of rare books, including the Wainwright Collection, the Hon. Robert Mackay Collection, Canadiana, and the Law Faculty Publications, all of which quietly document centuries of legal history and thought.

From January to April 2026, I had the incredible opportunity of working with these materials as part of a special collections practicum during the final semester of my Master of Information Studies program. My project focused primarily on auditing the Law Library’s rare holdings and improving access to them by developing a LibGuide webpage dedicated to promoting and supporting their use. As I learned quite quickly, one of the greatest challenges these collections faced was not preservation, but discoverability. Limited digitization and online visibility made the materials difficult to find, meaning that books would sit undisturbed on the shelves and unseen by much of McGill’s community.

To address this, I started by examining how rare materials are presented across McGill’s libraries. Visits to Rare Books & Special Collections, the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, and the Marvin Duchow Music Library offered valuable insight into how historical collections are organized, described, and promoted to users at McGill. A key takeaway from these tours was that institutions tend to prioritize materials that are unique, visually engaging, or have strong teaching and research value. There is also a strong emphasis on storytelling or contextualization when describing rare materials to encourage deeper engagement and curiosity. These findings informed my approach to the LibGuide and how I would ultimately present the Law Library’s collections.

My own curiosity then led me to spend many hours in the Peter M. Laing Room among the books, both researching their history on my laptop and physically examining them from the shelves. This was my absolute favourite part of the project, and also where many hidden treasures came to light.

Take this 1537 folio, for example, titled In secundam Digesti verteris partem commentaria.  Printed less than a century after Gutenberg’s printing press transformed book culture in Europe, this item is the second oldest book in the library’s holdings. It is a substantial work on Roman law and part of the Canadiana collection.

Another standout was Coustumes generales du duchè d’Aouste, a beautiful folio with a vellum cover from 1588. It is a rare legal text, with only four other recorded copies, and includes handwritten annotations from previous owners. This item is part of the Wainwright Collection.

Finally, a personal highlight was the discovery of an 1826 copy of The Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. It contains all 85 essays written in 1787–1788 in support of the ratification of the United States Constitution, as well as the original Articles of Confederation and the Constitution with its amendments. This item is part of the Hon. Judge Mackay Collection.

While these works are historically significant for their legal content, their physical features are equally fascinating. Some contain elaborate typography and decorative woodcut elements, while others have signatures from previous owners, or centuries of wear that reveal how heavily they were once used. Others remain remarkably well preserved despite their age. In many ways, the condition of the books themselves tells a uniquely personal story of past readership and material history.

Another major part of my project involved digitization. As previously mentioned, digital copies of the library’s special collections were sparse at best, and items that were digitized were difficult to discover. My position as a part-time Digitization Assistant at McGill’s Digitization Lab came especially in-handy here, as I was able to use my technical skills to directly contribute to multiple digitization initiatives aimed at improving access to these materials.

One short-term initiative involved personally digitizing selected works from across the Law Library’s collections in the Digitization Lab. Each item was carefully photographed beneath a cradle-mounted camera system to capture high-resolution images without stressing the bindings. Once digitized, the materials were then incorporated into the LibGuide as featured items and are now available for digital consultation on the Internet Archive.

This initiative expanded into larger conversations surrounding the long-term future of digitization within the Law Library’s collections, particularly the Wainwright Collection and the proposed François Olivier-Martin sub-collection project. It also revealed another side of special collections work that often remains invisible to users. Decisions about which items to prioritize, what is available in the public domain, and how materials contribute to research value all shape how researchers ultimately encounter special collections online. Much of this work involved creating spreadsheets, verifying copyright, and developing proposals – less romantic forms of labour, perhaps, but all essential parts of the puzzle to making historical materials accessible.

Today, the Law Library’s collections can be explored through the newly developed LibGuide for the Nahum Gelber Law Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections. The guide offers further information on the history and materials held in each collection, and I encourage anyone interested to explore it. Physical materials are also available for consultation upon request in the Peter M. Laing Special Collections Room, open Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

I would like to extend my gratitude to all of McGill’s library staff for their support and interest throughout this project. A special thanks goes to Sandy Hervieux, Head Librarian at the Nahum Gelber Law Library, for her incredible mentorship, guidance, and kindness at every stage of my work. I would also like to thank Greg Houston, Head of Digitization, for his endless encouragement and for making the library’s digitization initiatives possible.