By Tom Jarvis
Mary Searles, the librarian of the John W. King New Hampshire Law Library, has announced that she will retire on August 30.
For 20 years, Searles has assisted lawyers, judges, law clerks, governmental agencies, librarians, and the public with reference and research. She has taught scores of law clerks how to do legislative histories, juggled the ongoing management of keeping legal resources updated, expanded legal resources to a network of public libraries, and created a sizeable collection of online legal resource guides.
“This has been a tremendous job,” says Searles. “They have given me a lot of freedom to build this library.”
Growing up in Hillsborough, she spent time with her aunt, a librarian at the New Hampshire State Library for 45 years, and her grandmother, who worked at the Conant Public Library in Winchester.
“We spent summers with my grandparents and would play in the library while my grandmother was working,” Searles recalls. “We would hang out in the little alcoves reading books and having a great time. I just loved being in a library.”
Initially pursuing her passion for music, Searles became a flutist. After graduating from the University of New Hampshire with a Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance in 1981, she moved to Illinois to continue her studies.
After almost a decade in the Prairie State, she returned to New Hampshire and earned a paralegal certificate from the New Hampshire Technical Institute.
In 1992, she began working at the New Hampshire Bar Association as one of the “pro bono paralegals.” When the Legal Advice and Referral Center was established, she became the coordinator for the DOVE Project, and subsequently for the Lawyer Referral Service.
In 2000, she decided to pursue a degree in librarianship.
“I was beginning to get burned out, but the information piece was still interesting to me,” Searles says. “I joined library associations to get a sense of what being a librarian was like and then decided to get my library degree. My original plan was to be a music librarian. A lot of people think I became the law librarian because I was interested in the law – and it is very interesting – but my profession is librarianship. I happen to practice that profession in a law library, but I would be just as happy in a music library, for example. What I study and what I think about is how to be a bridge for people between their information needs and the sources that will fill those needs.”
While attending graduate school at Simmons University in Boston, she worked at the Mary Baker Eddy Library and the New Hampshire Historical Society. Upon graduating with a master’s degree in library science in 2004, she became the librarian at the John W. King New Hampshire Law Library.
“When we hired Mary, the library was in tough shape,” says retired New Hampshire Supreme Court (NHSC) Justice Richard Galway. “It needed to be modernized. It wasn’t user friendly for the lawyers or even the judges. She turned all that around and took the law library to a new level, making it a welcoming experience and a really useful tool for the lawyers. She has had a major impact on the legal circles in New Hampshire. Mary is a real gem, and I am glad we hired her.”
One of Searles’ proudest achievements was the creation of the New Hampshire Law About website (courts-state-nh-us.libguides.com), a public-facing portal containing 94 legal research guides, that receives more than 10,000 hits per month.
According to Searles, “The site was created to teach people how to do legal research, to introduce reliable and accurate sources to them, and to highlight the sources here at the law library.”
Searles says she is also proud of the partnerships she developed with many public libraries across the state.
“Mary is a font of information,” says UNH Franklin Pierce School of Law Library Director Susan Zago. “She’s a powerhouse. She and my colleague Kathy Fletcher have worked for a long time to do sessions for public librarians on how they can answer legal questions without giving legal advice.”
Building on those partnerships, Searles has worked to expand legal resources to public libraries.
“It started with putting a Westlaw terminal and a small collection of books up in the Littleton Public Library to help out the North Country lawyers,” Searles says, adding that the project – and others like the website – was funded by pro hac vice fees. The original intent was to expand to other libraries, but the COVID-19 pandemic slowed progress until recently.
Digital Initiatives Librarian Eric Stern, who started at the law library this year, says there are now five public libraries around the state with free access to Westlaw and print collections of legal resources like the New Hampshire Practice Series, but by the fall there should be 11.
“I think Eric is going to achieve great things,” Searles says. “I think he will take the public library project and the law library itself in whole new directions.”
NHSC Justice James Bassett, who has been collaborating with Searles on a project to digitize Supreme Court cases going back to 1849, says that working with Searles has been one of the highlights of his 12 years on the Court.
“Mary is an invaluable walking, talking legal resource and will be sorely missed, not just by the members of our court but by the legal community and the citizens of New Hampshire,” Justice Bassett says.
Searles also trains law clerks and others on how to compile legislative histories.
“Mary was a fantastic teacher – she provided examples and step-by-step checklists,” says Heather Menezes, who worked as a Superior Court law clerk in 2005. “I can’t imagine a better person to be our state law librarian. I always knew I could reach out to Mary as a resource, whether I was a law clerk or in private practice. She is such an immense resource for anybody needing legal research.”
Outside of the law library, Searles has served on the Access to Justice Commission for 10 years.
“She has been a real advocate for libraries and the power of libraries to help with access to justice issues,” says Access to Justice Commission Co-Chair Mark Rouvalis.
“I can attest to her unwavering commitment to enhancing access to justice,” says Justice Bassett, who co-chairs the committee with Rouvalis. “As an active and energetic member, Mary was instrumental in providing online access to legal resources located in libraries throughout the state.”
Joseph Mitchell, a solo practitioner and frequent visitor to the law library says he doesn’t know how they will replace Searles.
“I’ve used the library extensively over four decades and she has been a wonderful resource,” he says. “She’s always been able to direct me to the right place. She’s uniquely helpful and compassionate for those of us who are not as smart as she is.”
When asked about her plans for retirement, Searles says she would like to take a year to decompress and spend time with family before possibly going back to work part-time at a library.
“I don’t want to travel the world or bungee jump or anything like that,” Searles says. “Going back to my music roots, I’d like to take up the Baroque recorder and also finally have a chance to study art history, but we’ll see what happens.”
As Searles prepares for her retirement, her contributions to the John W. King New Hampshire Law Library will be long remembered. Her colleagues all agree she has significantly benefited the legal community and the public.