Everyone Can Use the Library

“Everyone can use the law library. Our patron usage is split almost in half between members of the legal community—judges, attorneys, paralegals—and everyone else, like students, authors, reporters, self-represented litigants, or anyone with a legal question or issue.”

This from Jennifer Daligish, the law librarian at the Alden E. Miller Law Library of Clackamas County while on ClackCo Works, a podcast from Clackamas County hosted by Dylan Blaylock that highlights, among other things, how the government serves its residents. 

Daligish’s comments hit home for me as we build out the LexBlog Library of legal practitioner publishing/commentary, including the publishing of academics, librarians, law students and other professionals working in organizations advancing the law.

The public, as well as lawyers and the judiciary, can use this body of law.

After all, it was the general public who openly accessed legal information on the Internet before lawyers did. Bulletin boards, Usenet groups and then AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy were where tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people turned for legal information. Some of the insight from lay people and some from lawyers.

I was the Community Leader for AOL’s legal community. So many people received tangible and practical help, often who to talk to for a lawyer and how to prepare. 

Lawyers have generated close to two million vetted blog posts in the last twenty years. Include articles, insights, whitepapers, bulletins and email articles and that number could double.

Daligish shared just a couple stories of what a law library means:

”I have so many after almost 30 years of working in a public library and helping so many people. I’ll share a recent one. Last week, we had a patron who had lost custody of her child and spent months in the law library. She did a lot of research and represented herself. She came back to tell us she regained custody of her child. Those are the stories that stick with us. On the attorney side, I once helped an attorney who was writing a book, and he thanked us in the book for all the assistance we provided.”

 Imagine the stories we could create taking a legal library nation-wide, and then worldwide.

And if you’re in the area or looking for Oregon law, Daligish says “We’re open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. We don’t close during lunch, and people can come in during those hours. They can also reach us by phone or online.”