Sacramento County Public Law Library News
By Shirley H. David, Sacramento County Public Law Librarian

At the Sacramento County Bar Association Annual meeting last month, Bion Gregory recognized me for being the director of the Sacramento County Public Law Library. He explained that since I would be retiring in the fall of 2004, I would not be at the next annual meeting. Bion is correct. I will be leaving Sacramento next fall to move to Hawaii. It’s been my pleasure to be a part of the Sacramento legal community during the last twenty years and to have the opportunity to grow the library with world-class services for everyone who seeks legal information in our region.

A hiring committee of the library board has begun a nationwide search for the new director. The committee, chaired by Judge David DeAlba, also includes Judges Jeffrey Gunther, Renard Shepard, and Loren McMaster, and attorney W. Austin Cooper. Faye Jones, director of the Gordon Schaber Law Library at McGeorge Law School, Marvin Anderson, retired director of the Minnesota State Law Library, and I will be advising the committee. The goal is to have an offer out in June so that if the successful candidate is making a move to Sacramento and also has a young family, he or she will have time to house hunt and enroll the children in school before the fall term begins. I plan to introduce the new director to our legal and library community before I leave. The job ad will be out this spring and it will be available on the library’s website.

If you haven’t seen our website lately, point your browser at www.saclaw.lib.ca.us. New on the site is the library’s annual report. The public services librarians have created pathfinders and legal links to books, agencies, and websites by topic. MCLE classes available at the library are posted there with the registration forms. You can also go directly to the library catalog where you can reserve a book and renew books you have out.

Matthew-Bender publications are back in their CD-ROM format after an experiment with the products as Internet accessible on-line form. Customers found the on-line version was not as easy to search, and the forms were impossible to download as a complete document. The library computers are again loaded with the popular California Forms of Pleading and Practice, California Library, and Federal Bankruptcy Library. The library’s public computer Westlaw contract has been upgraded to allow up to five concurrent users. West still requires that its public law library contracts only be available from the library’s own computers.

Attorneys who have used the Attorney Convenience Center in room 402 of the downtown Gordon Schaber Courthouse are finding it a very quiet place to work. There are desks and telephone lines. Plus the library maintains a computer with access to the Internet and legal databases. For the door code call the library or ask at information counter on the first floor of the courthouse.