LISNews: Librarian News

Anonymous Patron writes "American Bar Association Journal reports For more and more lawyers, Google has become an irresistible and indispensable ultimate answer-finder.
Yet even those who are admittedly a little gaga over Google say that search engines ought to be used with caution, especially when it comes to relying on search results as evidence."

Anonymous Patron writes "Law library still relies on hard copy in time of Google"

An article in the Scranton Times Tribune reports that the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Pennsylvania is closing its law library, located in the basement, to provide more room for the sheriff's offices. New cells have been built, and the prisoner-handling operation will be moved down there once the work is complete.

In the meantime, the county bar association has been supporting the library out of its own pocket for the past nine months. The bar association is now suing the county over its refusal to continue paying for library materials, arguing that the county is required to do so by law.

bentley writes "A recent change in the way Florida funds its state court system puts the continued operations of county law libraries in question, according to a letter to the editor of Hernando Today. "At the present time, the law libraries are funded by filing fees, paid by anyone filing a civil lawsuit in the state courts. That's how it should be - those who use the libraries are paying for it. But effective July 1, 2004, counties will be prohibited from charging these nominal fees; and each county will be forced to either maintain the law library from county funds or shut it down entirely.""