Concepción Arenal Library

Collections  

Resources

The Library's collections, almost all of which have open access, are made up of more than 190,000 volumes of textbooks and almost 5,000 journal titles (4,782 closed and some 200 in progress). The main areas of knowledge represented in its resources reflect the research and teaching carried out in the Faculties of Law, Political and Social Sciences and Labour Relations:

• Law.
• Criminology.
• Political Science and Administration.
• Sociology.
• Political economics.
• Labour relations and human resources.

Historical Collection

This collection has closed access on the first floor and can be consulted on request, and is excluded from home loan. The bibliographic collection is made up of more than 10,000 books, from 1560 to 1969, from the collections of the different areas of the Faculty of Law and part of the legacy of its professor and dean Paulino Pedret Casado (1899-1969), with a very complete, extensive library (with about 4,200 identified copies), and very rare documents on Galicia, distributed by different libraries of the USC.

In the 20th century there were also two other important additions: the library from the internationalist Camilo Barcia Trelles (1888-1977), comprising some 2,810 titles of textbooks, mainly on international legal subjects, published between 1861 and 1977, and that from the Professor of Penitentiary Law, Agustín Fernández Albor (1929-1987), comprising 1,209 titles of textbooks published between 1843 and 1987.

This century, the collection from donations has continued to grow, with the donation to the library by the family of the Professor of Civil Law, José Manuel Lete del Río (1938-2007), which consists of 1,182 titles published between 1846 and 2007, and from the family and personal library of the UCM Professor of International Relations, Eduardo Vilariño Pintos, with an initial donation of 324 titles, the first of which was published in 1591 and, since his retirement, his professional library until 2016, totalling 2,435 copies.

In 2013, the family of the professor Carolina Rovira bequeathed to the USC, the library created by the late professor throughout her teaching and research activity at this University. Her professional library was accepted not only due to the intrinsic value of its collections, but also due to its value as a collection for the studies of Philosophy of Law.

In 2016, the University accepted the legacy of the Professor of International Public Law, Manuel Pérez González, retired from the Complutense University of Madrid, but closely linked to the University of Compostela, where he was professor and dean of the Faculty of Law, where he left a deep imprint. His professional library is already incorporated in its entirety, with a total of 1,493 copies. It is particularly valuable in subjects such as international humanitarian law.

During 2018, the family of Juan Luis Pintos (1939-2018), professor at the Faculty of Political Science, donated his professional library, with 1,484 volumes, mainly related to sociology, now fully processed and available to the university community. Recently, this collection in the field of sociology was increased with more than 1,500 volumes thanks to the family donation of the former professor of this university, José Castillo Castillo (1931-2019), a legacy that is in the process of being added to the collections.

IDIUS Collection

The Concepción Arenal Library houses the library of the former Industrial Law Institute of the USC, a library specialising in industrial property, intellectual property and competition law, with more than 9,300 volumes and numerous periodicals.

Initially, the IDIUS Library was located in the Department of Commercial Law, the Institute’s headquarters, and, at present, its bibliographic collections are integrated in the Concepción Arenal Library, and can be consulted in the researchers' room on the first floor.

This is a collection with a high degree of updating and the Institute has had the financial collaboration of the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office to acquire part of its bibliographic collections.

CEDE Collection

In 2009, the entire collection of the European Documentation Centre, now called the Centre for European Studies and Documentation (CEDE), was incorporated into the Concepción Arenal Library. Its collections are located in the researchers' room on the first floor with open access, but are not available for loan.

The bibliographic collection consists of more than 5,000 books and brochures published mainly by the Publications Office of the European Union, more than 100 journal titles, as well as .COM documents up to 2009, Commission opinions up to 2003 and European Parliament session documents up to 1999.