Since it was built in 1944, Peel Manor has served as home to thousands of McGill related people. The 33-unit apartment building, tucked in beside Chancellor Day Hall on upper Peel St., was acquired by McGill in 1961 as an investment property. This past summer, the wrecking ball moved in, knocking down Peel Manor to make way for a new law library.

"The existing library," says Jane Lalonde, BA'83, of the McGill Development Office, "is totally inadequate. It's too cramped, too hot, the air is bad, and the noise level is atrocious." The book collection has fallen behind the times, too. "We're really good up to the late 70's," says head law librarian Robert Clarke, BA'77, MLS'83, "then we start to see gaps." There will be more space in the new building for books and journals, some of which have been in storage off-site.

The next phase is to expand the current collection and ensure the library is technologically leading edge. Every student space will be equipped with jacks for laptop computers, so that students can plug into the library databases easily. "This made more sense than buying a bunch of computer equipment that would be obsolete in five years," says Clarke, "and the library is working on a set-up kit that will configure students' computers for use of the electronic library resources." There will also be a computer training facility managed by library staff for teaching electronic legal information retrieval.

The law library should open in September 1998 and will be named the Nahum Gelber Law Library. Nahum Gelber QC, BA'54, BCL'57, a lawyer with the Montreal firm Chait Amyot, is a major donor for the library. "I'm a strong believer in learning and libraries," says Mr. Gelber. Other donations come from Senator Alan MacNaughton, BA'26, BCL'29, LLD'92, the Mitzi and Mel Dobrin Foundation and the Helsam Foundation, and from leading national law firms. Total funding is approximately $9.1 million, all from private support. The provincial government was not asked to support the project, since they maintain McGill's overall library space is adequate, though the libraries have consistently ranked among the lowest in the Maclean's magazine survey of Canadian universities.

Aside from serving McGill students and faculty, the law library is used regularly by members of the Montreal legal community, who can buy memberships to McGill's libraries for $200 ($100 for McGill Alumni), and by students from Université de Montréal and Université du Québec à Montréal. As well, ordinary citizens looking to hone their legal skills for a day in court use the library and are often helped by the staff in negotiating the stacks of arcane reference material.