With the rise of online research, this Jackson County library is getting rid of books
Shawn Lee wanders the bookshelves in the Jackson County Law Library’s downtown Kansas City location, pointing out weighty tomes commenting on law stretching back over the last century and beyond. Here, old editions of the University of Missouri - Kansas City Law Review; there, aging journals from the Kansas and Missouri state bar associations.
“Books,” the Kansas City-based attorney says, “are basically my home.”
Lee has lamented recently the downtown location’s impending closure as officials overseeing the facility have elected to not renew its lease, which expires at the end of May.
They point to a lack of use of the location, the cost of keeping it open and the shift toward electronic research. The move will mean the Jackson County Law Library, founded in 1871, will make a significant shift away from a physical, printed collection, as those in charge of the organization seek to find a new home for the downtown location’s books and wind down operations in the coming days.
“My biggest concern is that these materials still have value and they’re just not being valued by the administration or our culture,” Lee says. “I think if they had a little more value from the administration, then I think our culture would value them.”
‘The past incarnation of the library is not it’
Aaron Lukken, president of the Jackson County Law Library’s board, confirmed to The Star that the lease for the library’s downtown space, which sits on the third floor of the Kessler Building at 1301 Oak Street, is up at the end of the month and won’t be renewed.
The law library has had a dwindling number of members over the last decade, and with the vast majority of legal research done electronically, officials overseeing the library elected to shutter the space, he said.
“The mere concept of physical books in a library is just not a creature of the 2020s,” he said. “We’ve unfortunately gone the way of the shopping mall. Yes, they’re still there, but fewer and farther between every day.”
“We don’t like it,” he added. “Every single member of our board loves the place. We’ve got a very deep-seated affection for the library, for the organization, for the collection, but we’ve had to face this reality that we operate with public dollars and as stewards of those public dollars, we have to use them in the most effective way possible, and the past incarnation of the library is not it.”
The Jackson County Law Library is organized as a nonprofit, which is overseen by a board and ultimately the courts, which fund the organization. Alongside the downtown library, the organization has a small space it maintains with computer access to legal resources at the Eastern Jackson County Courthouse in Independence. Lukken said it’s likely a similar space will eventually be opened in the downtown courthouse.
In an email to The Star, Jackson County Circuit Court spokesman Scott Lauck confirmed usage of the space has declined “dramatically, primarily because of the increased access attorneys and judges have to computerized legal research services,” he said.
“Therefore, the court has begun the process of moving the library’s operations out of the building at 13th and Oak and back into the downtown courthouse where electronic access to legal research resources will be provided. The branch of the law library that operates from inside the Independence courthouse will remain there.”
‘Greater efficiencies and cost savings’
The law library’s budget for 2024 is roughly $377,000. While the organization did have paying members, it has largely been funded by a $20 surcharge paid by parties filing a civil case. That money can also go to areas like the circuit’s family services and justice fund, courtroom renovations and technology enhancement, Lauck said.
“This consolidation will result in greater efficiencies and cost savings, as public funds will no longer be needed to pay rent or for hard copy updates for legal resources that are available online,” Lauck said.
The law library is looking to offload its extensive collection of physical books housed at the downtown space, but has found that other groups, like law libraries and bar associations, are also looking to pare down their collections or don’t have the space or staffing to maintain a library, Lukken said. The organization has even been in contact with filmmakers to offer books up for use in productions.
Lauck said both the board and courts will be careful “to preserve materials that should be kept” and have contacted various groups including the Jackson County Historical Society and UMKC’s Leon E. Bloch Law Library “to carry out this process in an appropriate way.”
Lee, the Kansas City attorney, acknowledged that the search engines attorneys now use as they do their research can be helpful but is hesitant to trust them fully.
“What I’m afraid of is if all of the books get destroyed, we won’t have an anchor,” he said. “There will be nothing to cross-reference whether or not the law as we understand it on our computer terminal is reflective of what the actual law is in our history.”
