Below are excerpts from a letter from Charles Dyer, President of the Council of California County Law Librarians
"...All of California's county law libraries are created by state statute and subsequent resolutions of the respective county boards of supervisors. Every one of California's fifty-eight counties has one. County law libraries are public libraries (Business & Professions Code 6360), and they provide the public with access to legal information. By statute, every county law library board of trustees must appoint a librarian, but the statute, written in 1891, does not specify credentials. In truth, many county law libraries are not well financed and rely on part-time staff. Several full-time librarians at several of the county law libraries do not have a master's degree in library or information science either...
...CCCLL's position is that when a county law library board of trustees has appointed a librarian under Business & Professions Code 6345, that person qualifies as meeting the 'demonstrated professional experience' standard under Education Code 18830(a)(5), which is permitted to be substituted for the requirement of a master's degree in library and information science in determining whether a library meets the eligibility standards of the Library of California. Of course, the library must meet other criteria as well.
Eventually, when the Library of California Act is amended, county law libraries could be automatically included in the Library of California, in a similar way as members of California Library Services Act public library systems are not required to certify that they meet the eligibility standards, Education Code 18830(d).
If there is additional information that CCCLL could provide to the Library of California and the regional library networks, please let me know. Thank you for passing on this position to the regional networks, and, again, thank you for speaking to our group.
Very truly yours,
Charles R. Dyer
President, CCCLL"