Category: Blog

In a follow-up story, even though it is still in need of a law librarian, the 23rd Judicial Circuit regional law library in Martinsburg, West Virginia is once again open to the public.

We reported last week that the Berkeley County Law Judicial Center in Martinsburg, West Virgina has had to close its doors to the public for the past year because it does not currently have a law librarian. In response to publicity about this situation, the chief justice of the West Virginia Court of Appeals has directed the state court system’s executive director to hire a librarian for this library as soon as possible.

For more on this development, click here.

Eastern West Virginians in need of valuable legal resources and research assistance literally have been locked out of a publicly funded regional law library for more than a year, according to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals’ top librarian.

“Since we are without a librarian at the moment, I am reluctant to leave the library open,” Kaye L. Maerz said Thursday at the library in the Berkeley County Judicial Center in Martinsburg.

For more on this story, Click Here.

Those of you who are planning to take cruises this summer might be interested in this blog post by Mary Flood about just how many of your rights you sign away in the standard cruise contract! The post discusses a presentation that was made to the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries during a five-day legal conference that took place on a Carnival cruise ship.

Under a new state law, local municipalities are now authorized to tap into public libraries’ “excess funds.” In a nutshell, if a public library does not spend all of its budgeted money and the local government gets the approval of the library trustees, the money could be returned to the municipality. For more details, click here.

From the April 3rd edition of the University of Buffalo Reporter, Protecting Books From Ravages of Time, Nature, Kevin Fryling reports on the steps taken by UB Law Library staff after “[a]n overnight storm surge [] leaked through the roof [] and left thousands of books, periodicals and research materials—including some rare and highly specialized items—severely damaged or destroyed.

The University of Connecticut has announced that it is naming its law library in memory of alumnus and former Connecticut Governor Thomas J. Meskill. For more about this announcement, click here.

The Star Ledger’s I Am New Jersey blog contains a lengthy entry about Bill Dane, “the man who, for 60 years, has protected and enriched one of the finest public collections of prints in the country.

After damage from leaks and flaws in its granite facade, the University of Connecticut Law Library is going to undergo a $19 million repair job. For the record, the law library is 11 years old, and was built at a cost of $24 million.

For more details, click here.

From the 9/1/07 F Minus comic strip, commentary on the value of public libraries.