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32 Legal Reference Services Q. 1 (2013)

handle is hein.journals/lgrefsq32 and id is 1 raw text is: Legal Reference Services Quarterly, 32:1-12, 2013 Routledge Published with license by Taylor & Francis Taylor& Francis Group ISSN: 0270-319X print / 1540-949X online DOI: 10.1080/0270319X.2012.723570 The Education of a Twentieth-Century Law Librarian ROBERT C. BERRING Berkeley Law School, University of Calhfornia, Berkeley, Calfornia, USA The author interweaves the story of his professional career and the development of the modern universe of digital information. Early days, beginning as a library assistant are carried through the first professionaljob at the University ofIllinois, Champain--Urbana. KEYWORDS librarians, card catalogs, reference, biography All under the heavens is chaos, the situation is excellent.' THE SETUP This is the first segment of what will be a much longer work. The subject is my life in law librarianship and legal education. Why bother? Each of us has a story to tell; why publish mine? Who would care?2 Life is a matter of time and circumstance. If one is in the right place at the right time, good things can happen. I was very lucky on this account. I graduated from Boalt Hall Law School in 1974. Legal education was still set in the traditional mold, and legal information was at the height of the development of its marvelous paper system of organization and distribution. The West Publishing Company was an omnipresent force, so pervasive that one assumed that it was part of the legal system. The National Reporter System was riding high, with Shepard's Citators as its sidekick. Lawyer's co- op Bancroft-Whitney was a rival, but only in a technical sense as it was a much smaller entity that was composed of old publishers from New York and California. There was also a crowd of smaller regional publishers nipping 0 Robert C. Berring Many thanks to those who helped along the way. Address correspondence to Robert C. Berring, Berkeley Law School, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-7200. E-mail: r.berring@law.berkeley.edu 1

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