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![handle is hein.lbr/llnews0030 and id is 1 raw text is:
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Newsletter of the Law Librarians of New England
Volume 30, Issue 1, 2011
Remembering Morris Cohen
By David Warrington
Librarian for Special Collections
Harvard Law School Library
It is with great sadness that we report that Profes-
sor Morris Cohen, former director of the Yale,
Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and SUNY-
Buffalo law libraries, passed away on Saturday,
December 18, 2010, at his home in New Haven
at the age of eighty-three. Mr.
Cohen had a career that spanned
more than fifty years, and was,
at the time of his death, a Yale
Law School Professor Emeritus
and Librarian Emeritus.
The library should be an
educational force in the school,
rather than a passive place, he
told the Harvard Law Record
shortly after he arrived in Cam-
bridge in 1971; my orientation is toward a person-
al sort of librarianship. The characterization was
certainly apt as countless students, researchers,
and colleagues have discovered for themselves.
No one delighted more in sharing an encyclopedic
knowledge of all aspects of legal research than
Morris, nor was more enthusiastic in teaching the
techniques of discovering legal information. He
was as indefatigable in expanding library collec-
tions and services as he was in conducting his own
research and writing; someone once remarked that
Morris was the energizer bunny before there was
an Energizer Bunny.
During his decade at the Harvard Law Library,
Morris worked to build an organization that held
its research and teaching responsibilities to the
same high standard as it did its curatorial ones.
He designed and implemented the Law Library's
first program in the teaching of legal research,
and introduced computers into the
Library for LEXIS and for com-
puterized legal instruction. Under
his watch the Law Library's book
collection increased 30% to 1.4
million volumes. To protect its un-
matched collections of rare books
and manuscripts, he oversaw the
conversion of the Langdell South
Middle classroom into a state-of-
the-art special collections stor-
age facility with compact stacks
and excellent temperature and humidity control.
Above all, he hired and mentored a new generation
of law librarians whose subsequent accomplish-
ments have shaped modern law librarianship.
At the beginning of his career Morris developed a
passion for learning everything he could about the
books and manuscripts that make up the raw mate-
rials of legal history. An interview in the Harvard
Law Bulletin (Spring 1981) reported that in 1963
he became interested in the bibliographic accom-
plishments of Eldon James [a former HLS Profes-
Cont. on page
LLNE News, Volume 30, Issue], 2011 1](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.lbr/llnews0030&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)