[1][note 1] Early volumes were published annually, edited by the chief justices of, and 'some other judges' in, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the West Indies Associated States, and reported cases only from said jurisdictions.
[2][3] By 1988, the series were deemed essential stock for court libraries by a majority of 'legal officers, the judiciary and private practitioners of the Commonwealth Caribbean.
[6][note 2] By December 2018, the Reports had been digitised and disseminated online, thereby improving access to and discoverability of West Indian case law, resulting in a '[Commonwealth] Caribbean legal literature [which] has evolved rapidly in the last decade.
'[2] Further, in a July 1985 address to the Caribbean Association of Law Libraries, Claude Denbow, a tutor at the Hugh Wooding Law School, noted that the Reports were still not sufficiently referenced in proceedings before West Indian courts, especially by barristers trained in England, leading to judgements discordant with 'local conditions.
[note 5] For instance, the first record of said table indicates that the decision of the Trinidad and Tobago Supreme Court, entitled Archbald v Camacho, was decided in 1960 and may be found in volume 3 of the West Indian Reports, starting on page 40.