International Law Book Facility    

volunteering

Thomson Reuters and the ILBF

The ILBF (International Law Book Facility) is a charity scheme that provides good quality second hand legal textbooks, donated by the UK legal community, to not-for-profit organisations in need of legal research resources across the globe.

Thomson Reuters have been actively taking part in this initiative for a number of years, donating surplus stock to those who could benefit from it rather than other means which could have a negative impact on the environment. It has become a big part of the way we strive to be more environmentally friendly in the way we operate.

Prospective recipient organisations submit a comprehensive application form, outlining their user demographic and the potential uses for law books, which is assessed by the ILBF Operating Committee. At the ILBF's storage facility, volunteers unpack and sort book donations from companies like Thomson Reuters, determining which are most suitable for particular recipients. The selected books are then packed into boxes and sent to the recipient organisation in question. Once the books are received, the recipient organisation provides feedback to the ILBF.

Since 2005 the ILBF has sent over 75,000 books to more than 200 not-for-profit organisations in 54 countries across Africa, Asia, South America, Caribbean, Europe and the Pacific. During the global pandemic Thomson Reuters supplied over 1200 books to organisations that needed them.

https://ilbf.org.uk/2020/07/shipments-in-the-time-of-covid-19/

The most recent delivery was to Ghana, delivering 600 books to three universities. You can read about the collaboration here.

In 2021, we collaborated with ILBF to help to deliver books to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands in order to help improve the facilities in the Court House by creating a library. Despite the continued constraints of the coronavirus pandemic the ILBF managed to send two shipments of books, one of which was donated by Sweet and Maxwell. 88 boxes of law reports, encyclopaedias and textbooks were shipped.

https://ilbf.org.uk/2022/03/turks-and-caicos-islands-create-new-law-library/

To find out more about the ILBF and work it does, visit https://ilbf.org.uk/