Many thanks to Jonathan Stock, recently retired as Supervising Law Librarian at the Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Library at Stamford, for writing this fine, thought provoking article. It has been published in the July 2010 issue of AALL Spectrum and we have linked to the Spectrum article with Jonathan’s permission.
Jonathan’s article is truly an allegory which can be considered from many perspectives, not the least of which are Jonathan’s impressions of recent efforts to help save many of the court law libraries in Connecticut from possible oblivion.
Before linking to the actual article, I would like to share a bit of our e-mail exchange after his article first appeared in AALL Spectrum
DAVID BADERTSCHER: Thank you for sending the article. I had not yet seen it in final form. Like much great fiction, your article is not really fiction in the most fundamental sense. This is fine allegorical writing. Keep this up and we will all be calling you the John Bunyon of the library world!
FROM JONATHAN’S RESPONSE: … It did end up being a bit like John Bunyan, with modern updates and annotations from Kurt Vonnegut and Joe Heller. T.S. Eliot luanches, but Yeats gets a walk-on too. So does Neville Chamberlain: a people far away of whom we know nothing. It all started one weary night a few months ago as the stupidity of it all soaked in. The first thing that came to mind was from Catch-22. It was the place where the bad guys (maybe Captain Black) consign Yossarian to a shrink. They may put him up on pentathol before starting their question. The first one is:
“Where were you born, Yossarian?’
“In a State of Innocence.”
Now, please go to Chambers of the Sea: Who Needs Law Libraries? It’s All Free on the IInternet and enjoy Jonathan Stock’s article for yourselves.
David Badertscher