Court law library open, but abridged

BANGOR – The law library at the Penobscot County Courthouse is open for business.

It’s just missing a few books – about 15,000 volumes to be exact.

Judy Bennett, who worked as the librarian until her retirement last week, should know. She oversaw the packing and labeling of the 740 boxes that were removed from the third floor of the courthouse to make way for the Penobscot Regional Communications Center.

The center is moving from its cramped quarters in the basement of the District Court building later this month.

The books are sitting in a tractor-trailer at Husson College until shelving arrives. In six to eight weeks, most of the law books should be unpacked and available at the college’s library, according to Amy Averre, Husson’s librarian.

Students in the college’s criminal justice and paralegal programs are expected to make use of the books, she said on Friday. The Husson library, like the law library, is open to the public.

The law library at the courthouse has been downsized, not moved, as has been reported, Bennett insisted her last hectic week on the job. The computers, copier and the publications used most often have been moved into three small rooms on the same floor where the library has been located for decades.

The large room that faces Hammond Street is being converted into the dispatch center at a cost of more than $330,000, including the purchase of new consoles.

Most of the information lawyers and the public want still is available at the courthouse, Bennett said. It’s just not in a book.

Over the past few years, the librarian has purchased fewer and fewer books. Instead, money has been spent for online research services such as LexisNexis and Westlaw, she has said.

Both are key sites for topics in business law, criminal justice and paralegal studies and treatises that include analysis of recent decisions in specialty areas of the law such as education, trademark and patent, labor and real estate.

“What I usually need are the computers,” Bangor lawyer Matthew Erickson, whose office is a short walk from the courthouse, said Friday. “The law library has the deluxe version of the online search engines which are very expensive for small law offices like ours. When I need it [to research case law], I really need it. Nothing else will do.”

The downsizing of the library has changed the way inmates at Penobscot County Jail conduct legal research, according to Sgt. Laura Lebreton, program director for the jail. Instead of going to the library twice a week to bring legal books back to prisoners, Lebreton spends some time twice a week seeking out the information on her office computer using legal search engines.

“We were headed in this direction,” she said Friday. “We just did it a bit sooner now that we have access to fewer books.”

Once the new criminal justice center, which will combine district court and superior court in one facility, is completed, the law library will be moved to that facility, according to Bennett.

The law library is open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on days the courthouse is open to the public.