Judicial Branch Libraries - Crisis Over or Just Beginning?

A review of the budgetary crisis facing the Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Libraries from 2008 - 2010 appears in the February 2011 issue of AALL Spectrum. The article - Saving Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Libraries - by Jonathan Stock is a summary of what occurred and a timely review of the potential looming crisis in funding public law libraries and maintaining public access to legal information. Stock's review of why the crisis happened is a classic exposition of the problems facing all law libraries and is well worth reading. One of Stock's telling points is that there are simply too many naive expectations that useable legal information is available for free on the Internet. Any serious researcher will tell you that this is simply not true.