I have customers who are interested in learning more about specific state regulations...

...such as those that regulate the establishment of day care centers. Where can I find this information? And is it available online?

There are times when customers want legal information, but what they are seeking is not a law. As confusing as that sounds, state regulations are significant department policies that have the force of law but are not actually statues (laws). Black’s Law Dictionary defines a regulation as “a rule or order, having legal force, usually issued by an administrative agency.” For example, in the Family Law volume of the Maryland Code, Title 5, Subtitle 5 (FL 5-550-557.1) states that the Department of Education shall have authority to register family day care homes and adopt regulations that relate to the registration of family day care. But this law does not lay out the regulations one must follow to obtain that license. Those rules can be found in the Code of Maryland Regulations, more commonly referred to as COMAR. The details for the licensing procedure are found in COMAR under the title for the State Board of Education (Title 13A of COMAR). There is a hierarchical code number system, which makes it easy to identify where to find regulations. Here’s the explanation from the Division of State Documents (DSD) in the Secretary of State’s office.

DSD manages the system, which is identical to the federal practice of issuing regulations. First proposed regulations are published in the Maryland Register and later codified into COMAR.

The Maryland Code and COMAR are both online and very much up-to-date. You can also find them and many other legal links on the Maryland Law subject guide at SLRC. There are multiple ways in which COMAR can be searched. You can search by the agency name, through a table of contents structure or by using a keyword. It’s tricky. If you don’t use the keyword as it appears in the regulation, you won’t find it. It can be challenging. There’s another thing you need to know about COMAR online. When you retrieve the citations for a topic, you will get a list of regulation links to view. Regulations can only be opened one at a time because they are listed individually. There is no way to open all the regulations for a subject at once. So if you want, for example, to retrieve all the regulations pertaining to child and family day care you will have to click on each regulation one-by-one to open them. When you have a lot of regulations in one subtitle it can be very labor intensive! So try to be as specific as possible to limit your results.

You can get help from the Maryland Department librarians at SLRC. The Department has a few different indexes to COMAR and a complete set in hard copy. If you want to get a section without opening all the individual regulations they can fax or e-mail pages to you. If you still want more help on understanding COMAR, take a look at the Maryland law section of Legal Reference for Public Libraries e-Learning Module at the LATI site on slrc.info.

How do you help someone with a law question without giving legal advice?

How does a librarian working at a typical branch library develop confidence and expertise in handling law questions? Here are a few helpful hints:

Use the Model Reference Behaviors. Take some time and use your reference interview skills to make sure you understand what your customer is trying to find.

Be familiar with your legal resources, print, electronic, and web. Most libraries will have Black’s Law Dictionary, the standard dictionary of legal terminology. If your library doesn’t have Black’s, check your catalog. You might have another law dictionary that you can use for basic legal definitions. Another useful source for general legal information is a law encyclopedia such as West’s Encyclopedia of American Law. Some libraries have access to an online legal encyclopedia such as Gale’s Encyclopedia of Everyday Law.

Since it provides subject access to the laws of the State of Maryland, Michie’s Annotated Code of Maryland is in constant use in many public libraries. U.S. Government Depository libraries may have the U.S. Code, which provides subject access to the laws of the United States.

There are many legal resources available on the Web. The State Library Resource Center’s Getting Started in Legal Research guide serves as a useful introduction to some of the most useful websites. If you’re interested in learning how to use the Web version of the U.S. Code, look at our Using the U.S. Code Online tutorial.

Keep a current list of appropriate agencies for legal referrals. For example, you’ll want contact information for legal aid and local and state bar associations. It’s also useful to know which law libraries are available to the public in your area. These might be law schools or court law libraries.

Know what types of legal questions you can answer as opposed to those that require the services of an attorney. Here are examples of some legal questions that we can potentially answer:

• Definitions of legal terms and expressions
• How to use our legal resources
• Find copies of specific U.S., state, or local laws
• Locate a case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court
• Basic information on attorneys
• Legal forms (including where to find Maryland Circuit and District Court official forms)

Now that we know what we can do, what kinds of legal questions should we refer to other agencies or an attorney? Here are some examples:

• A customer wants help writing his last will and testament.
• A patron is having difficulty understanding a particular law and wants you to help her interpret it.
• An individual is having difficulties with her next-door neighbor and wants to know what legal remedies are available.

In general, as public librarians, we can help people use legal resources and assist in finding specific laws and cases but we should always avoid providing legal advice or interpretation. When in doubt, consult with your supervisor or refer to your system’s reference service policy on legal questions.