Cataloguing Practices and Bibliographic Control in Law Libraries in South South Nigeria

This study examined cataloguing practices and the state of bibliographic control in law libraries in South South Nigeria, drawing on institutions in Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Edo, Bayelsa, and Cross River States. Consistent and authoritative bibliographic control is fundamental to the retrieval efficiency of legal collections, particularly as law libraries hold diverse material types including statutes, law reports, and treaty documents with specific descriptive requirements. A descriptive survey design was used, and data were obtained from law librarians and cataloguers in fifteen law libraries through structured questionnaires, interviews, and catalogue auditing exercises. The study found that cataloguing practices varied considerably across institutions, few libraries applied specialist legal cataloguing standards consistently, and subject headings were often locally devised rather than drawn from authoritative legal thesauri. The study recommended the adoption of a regional standard for legal cataloguing, the organisation of joint cataloguing workshops, and investment in legal cataloguing software. Keywords: cataloguing, bibliographic control, law libraries, South South Nigeria, legal information management.