Indiana Supreme Court Law Library captures history in its rare books collection

Tucked away on the third floor of the Indiana Statehouse, the Indiana Supreme Court Law Library boasts a robust collection of rare historical books that inform past and present legal research.

Maintained by librarian Cathrin Verano, the library’s rare book collection gives visitors a glimpse at legal documents and decisions in Indiana, the United States and around the world.

Titles in the collection include everything from an early print of the Indiana Constitution to an account of Queen Marie Antoinette’s execution. The titles serve a major goal of the library’s mission.

“It’s very important to us to provide access to these materials that are pretty scarce, in some cases, for people to be able to come in and see them and use them,” Verano said.

Preserving history

The rare book collection holds around 200 titles, including individually bound titles, titles that are bound together, and titles that are spread across several volumes. Fitzherbert’s Abridgement, the oldest book in the collection, is divided into two volumes, though Verano typically only brings out the second volume because it’s in better physical shape than the first.

Visitors can make an appointment to see a title, but Verano also rotates them out in the supreme court’s display case, which is situated in the third-floor courtroom. Right now, the display case features books on laws from the 1600s regarding pirates, an idea the library’s intern came up with ahead of the summer season.

Verano said having direct access to the collection is a huge benefit for visitors.

“There’s just kind of the immediacy of being able to touch the object,” she said. “It makes a much deeper impact, too, than sitting and listening to somebody talk to you about it.”

When Verano first came to the law library in 2021, the rare book collection was more or less scattered around the Statehouse. While some books were in the library’s general collection already, others had been stored elsewhere in the building or were on permanent display in the courtroom.

One of her tasks has been to consolidate the titles into one allotted section, both for organizational purposes and to preserve the books’ conditions. While she does not have access to extensive preservation tools, she is able to keep the rare book collection in a section of the library with the lowest light levels to maintain their integrity.

In 2023, the law library received a $4,500 Preservation Assistance Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant was used to purchase archival supplies to help Verano not only organize and store items from the library but also pay for a condition assessment from a professional conservator.

The conservator wrote a detailed report of each book in the collection, which will eventually be used as a guide to physically preserve the books.

Funding will still need to be obtained to carry out those treatments. While grant money on the national level is difficult to come by at the moment, Verano said she plans to apply for funding as it becomes available.

Opinions on how books should be preserved vary in principle: while some believe books should be fully repaired to preserve their contents, others believe it’s best to keep them as they are and prevent them from getting worse.

One of the titles in the collection, which details Native American law from the 1800s, is no longer bound together, but Verano keeps it in an acid-free container, so its contents are preserved.

Accessibility to the public

The law library sees many visitors each year, including students and legal professionals alike, all stepping through the library’s doors for different purposes.

“We did a scavenger hunt for a group of kids,” Verano said. “We try to kind of tailor it to different ages, so some were more specific. Some were, like, ‘in volume 10 of this particular book, what’s the arrow pointing to?’ And I had left a little sticky note…others were, find a pink book, find the fire extinguisher.”

Visitors can also use the library’s collections for research, both within the stacks and online. Verano catalogs the library’s contents in the OCLC, a global library database that tracks the locations of books around the world. The database feeds into search platforms like WorldCat, allowing users to track down and access materials.

While Verano uploads the collection to online databases, the books themselves are not accessible online. This is mostly for practical reasons, as the law library does not have the technology to scan and upload each books’ contents.

But, Verano said, many of the books are not exclusive to the library anyway.

“Many other institutions have digitized their copies of some of these books,” she said. “So they are available online to some extent.”

What’s perhaps more significant about the books are their previous owners.

While Verano cannot trace most of the books’ journeys to the law library, she has been able to identify some of their previous owners through inscriptions within the books.

Some of the titles were owned by former federal and state officials, including a Bible from the state supreme court’s 15th justice, Samuel Gookins.

Most of the collection’s titles can also be brought out for visitors to flip through. And when put side by side, the books provide deeper context for historical events, she said.

During The Indiana Lawyer’s visit to the collection, Verano placed Of the Law of Nature and Nations, which sets forth a system of law based on concepts from natural law, right next to a written account of Marie Antoinette’s trial and subsequent execution in France.

“It’s the way that they kind of reflect off of each other. [Thomas] Jefferson quoted from this [Of the Law of Nature and Nations] book to support his opinions on what should be done post-French Revolution, and then right next to it, we have this firsthand account of what happened to Marie Antoinette,” she said. “The way that they work together to provide kind of a more fulsome picture of history.”

Ultimately, the collection also preserves the state and the nation’s history. By being part of the high court’s library, the collection belongs to the people, Verano said.

Visitors can make an appointment to see the library and its rare books collection in person. Appointments can be made online 24 hours in advance at www.in.gov/courts/supreme/
law-library/.•