The Library subscribes to the following legal databases, journals and law reports. Access to subscription-based resources is only available in the Library apart from Bloomsbury Professional Online, Lexis PSL and PLI+ which can be accessed remotely upon application to the Library. Frequently used resources which do not require a subscription are also included in this list and are indicated as [free].
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Although we know that the Inn had a small library prior to 1540, an early account about the Inns of Court states that Middle Temple ‘had a simple library in which were not many bookes besides the law and that library by meanes that it stood always open, and that the learners had not each a key unto it, it was at last robbed of all the bookes in it’!
Investigating the recordkeeping practises of earlier generations at the Inn and the how documents gradually moved from the Treasury to their final home in the Archive Repository.
This selection of free legal websites is intended as a signpost for barristers, pupils and students conducting electronic research. More comprehensive lists of resources are available on the portals and gateway sites detailed below. The Library also subscribes to a number of databases, which are for in-library use only. Please refer to the E-Resources and e-books page for more information.
The Library produces a newsletter three times a year. The current issue (No. 22, September 2018) can be downloaded here, or to the right. You will require Adobe Reader.
Back Issues
Archived issues of the library’s newsletter can be downloaded to the right. Issues available are:
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For details of our lost property policy, please click here.
While our catalogue is not available for public consultation, listed below are the majority of the series held by the Middle Temple Archive, with dates of coverage, divided into administrative sections. This is intended to enable researchers to assess the archive's resources and narrow their enquiries.
John Ogilby's Africa, 1670
The breadth of the subject matter of the older books in the Inn's library attests to its members' interests. When Robert Ashley bequeathed his personal book collection to the Inn in 1641, it came to possess a wide-ranging library covering, not only law, but travel and geography, divinity, history and philosophy. Many of these remain in the Library’s collection of rare books while the social, economic, political, legal, educational and architectural history of the Middle Temple can be followed in the Inn's rich Archives.