Legal Definitions - librarian

In a formal organizational or parliamentary context, a librarian refers to an official or officer specifically tasked with the management and safekeeping of an organization's collection of published materials. This includes items such as books, journals, periodicals, and other documents. Often, this role also extends to overseeing the organization's own internal records, archives, and files, ensuring their proper organization, preservation, and accessibility for authorized use.

Here are some examples to illustrate this concept:

• Example 1: A State Legislature

  The State Assembly employs a librarian who is responsible for maintaining the official records of legislative debates, committee reports, and all bills introduced. This individual also curates a collection of legal texts, research documents, and historical legislative materials used by lawmakers and their staff for informed decision-making.

  This example demonstrates the term because the librarian acts as an officer within a governmental organization (the State Assembly), charged with the custody of both published matter (legal texts, research documents) and the organization's own archives and files (legislative debates, committee reports, bills).

• Example 2: A Large Corporate Law Department

  A major international corporation's in-house legal department designates a librarian to manage its extensive collection of legal treatises, regulatory compliance guides, industry-specific journals, and internal legal opinions. This ensures that the department's attorneys have immediate access to current legal research and that all past legal documentation is properly archived and retrievable.

  Here, the librarian is an officer within a private organization (the corporate legal department), responsible for managing published legal resources (treatises, journals) and the department's own internal files and archives (legal opinions, past documentation).

• Example 3: A Professional Medical Association

  A national professional medical association appoints a librarian to oversee its specialized library, which contains medical research journals, conference proceedings, and historical documents related to the profession. This officer also manages the association's administrative records, membership directories, and the archives of its various committees, making them available to members and researchers as needed.

  This scenario illustrates the librarian as an officer within a non-profit professional organization, responsible for both published materials (journals, proceedings) and the organization's own archives and files (administrative records, committee archives).