Sarah Holterhoff
Government Documents Librarian
Valparaiso University School of Law Library
Valparaiso, IN
I Fought the Law and the Law Won
Law Library Journal Spring 1997
March 18, 1997—The Bobby Fuller Four weren't singing about Valparaiso University Law Library in their 1966 hit recording, "I Fought the Law," but their lyric seems to capture what is happening here on a certain Tuesday in March 1997. With the students and faculty back after spring break and mild weather bringing out more than the usual number of pro se patrons, the library staff in general (and this government documents librarian in particular) are doing a land-office business in legal reference questions. Good thing I graded those research assignments over break and updated my section of the library Web site and finished editing the next library newsletter. Unfortunately, I still have hundreds of unread e-mail messages from discussion lists and a pile of routed professional journals to scan. But those will have to wait until I handle a few skirmishes on the reference front. . .
A young woman and an older gentleman appear at my office door, asking how to give temporary guardianship of a child to the child's grandmother and how to get access to $20,000 that is being held for that child in a trust fund (settlement from an accident in which the child was injured). I start them with the Indiana Code and Indiana Digest and tell them I'll be back later to check on how they are doing.
I check my mailbox and find a letter (addressed to me as President of the Chicago Association of Law Libraries) from a prisoner in Huntsville, Texas, requesting that I photocopy for him a number of pages from an Indiana legal directory. He helpfully includes instructions, such as "please put the book open faced down on a copy machine and make a copy of those two pages of criminal defense attorneys. . ." I forward this request to the student group that does pro bono research for prisoners.
Returning to my desk, I find a voice-mail message from an adjunct faculty member who is looking for a legislative history of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Reaching for Johnson's Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories,1 I find a number of possibilities. I also check the database guides for LEXIS and WESTLAW to confirm my recollection that both services offer online access to legislative history documents for this act. As I finish e-mailing this information to the professor, a faculty research assistant is at my office door, requesting the cite for the recent Food and Drug Administration regulations restricting the sale of cigarettes to teenagers. Using Netscape, I find my bookmark for GPO Access and use that to go to an FDA heading that provides a handy section on Nicotine Regulation Documents with cites to the final rule published in the Federal Register last August. As I print this for the student assistant, I explain the various sources available for the Federal Register text.
Leaving my office again in search of a much-needed cup of coffee, I walk upstairs, where an older gentleman asks me to help him locate the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms rule that says BATF agents have to swear allegiance to the United Nations. He was tipped off about this in a pamphlet someone handed him on the street. Proving that something doesn't exist can be tricky, but I get him started with the Index to the Code of Federal Regulations and the BATF telephone number in the U.S. Government Manual. He seems satisfied, at least for now, so I head for the stairs again. Stopping back to check on the people researching guardianship in Indiana, I encounter a student who needs change for a $50 bill to use the photocopier. I refer him to the nearby convenience store, since neither the library nor this cash-poor librarian can oblige him.
As the day wears on, the questions I face range from mundane (who can replace the toner cartridge in the laser printer in the computer room?) to memorable (how to fire a county prosecutor who is not taking timely action on an attempted murder case, asked by the wife of a man who was shot four times in the head and survived). A student would like a copy of an unenacted Indiana bill on parental rights from the 1996 session so he can compare it with the new version that has recently been introduced. I direct him to the library's collection of Indiana bills and also give him the URL for the Indiana state government's Web site. Some "simple" questions are deceptively so. Once again the Porter County Clerk of Court's office has referred an individual to our library to get a legal form—this time for filing a divorce action. As I show the young man (with small son in tow) the appropriate section in the Indiana formbook, I can see that he is deciding this is a bit more complicated than he had hoped. He finally says he may hire an attorney after all.
Returning to my office to retrieve some information on copyright law that I have set aside for a student writing a seminar paper, I take a phone call from a public librarian in a neighboring county. (As the only law library in northwest Indiana, we get lots of public library questions.) His patron is concerned about something she believes she heard on a recent visit to the Voting Rights Museum in Selma, Alabama: that the Fifteenth Amendment is due to "expire" soon. I try to be tactful in suggesting that the patron is worrying unnecessarily and that a repeal of this amendment is highly unlikely.
By now it's late afternoon and I take advantage of the temporary lull in reference questions to rearrange those piles and projects on my desk (to be tackled first thing tomorrow). Eventually I head off into the sunset (well, it would be a sunset if it weren't raining), saving my strength to match wits with the law again tomorrow.
1. Editor's Note: Nancy P. Johnson, Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories (1993).
For More Information About Law Librarianship or the AALL Recruitment Committee, contact committee chair Sarah Mauldin.