The Industrial Court Library of Trinidad and Tobago opened its doors in the early 1970's and by 1972 it was described as "a well established collection of an industrial relations library which supported the work of the Industrial Court of Trinidad and Tobago" by a UN study on "Development of Library Services". Its first Librarian, Ms. Ruth Sitahal, was largely responsible for building the small, but wide and varied collection and for binding the judges’ judgments at the end of of the calendar year and producing descriptors and an early subject index in the early 1970s. The distribution of the bound judgments was soley an internal affair with the exception of the copy sent to the Ministry of Labour. Its second librarian, Ms. Shera Badree, began summarizing judgments, and adding headnotes for the ‘published’ law reports with easy access via the new, online judgment catalogue in CDS/ISIS. However, this catalogue was solely for Library staff use. The bound judgments were distributed to the judges of the Industrial Court, the Ministry of Labour’s Library, and the rest were sold to the business community, trade unionists, Industrial Relations consultants, and attorneys.
The Library’s collection was and still remains solely a reference collection with some exceptions, i.e. inter-library loans. Mrs. Badree was also responsible for the internal subject index of the Industrial Court’s judgments. In the new millennium, Ms. L. Moy Hing updated the judgment database to WINISIS and later to the current Minisis database. The Industrial Court Library South branch officially opened its doors in 2006 and was equipped with an Online Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) and a wide selection of employment texts, industrial relations and law reports. Today, the Industrial Court Library boasts of a Library homepage website, two databases, an OPACs of summarized judgments, books and journals catalogue which can be easily accessed in the Library or online via the Library homepage.