September is Library Card Sign-up Month, an annual celebration of the many ways libraries connect people with information, resources, learning, and their communities. Since 1987, libraries across the country have used the month to encourage people to discover—or rediscover—what a library card can provide.
Here at the Harris County Robert W. Hainsworth Law Library, you don't need a library card to walk through our doors and use our legal research collection, but thanks to our partnership with Harris County Public Library (HCPL), a visit to the Law Library can connect you with much more than law books.
Get a Knowledge Card for HCPL access
Law Library visitors can register for an HCPL Knowledge Card, the library system's full-service card. The Knowledge Card provides access to HCPL's physical collections as well as an extensive collection of digital resources.
Our location also offers a small browsing collection of popular materials from HCPL, including fiction, nonfiction, biographies, cookbooks, children's books, and more. However, you aren't limited to what happens to be on our shelves. HCPL borrowers can place eligible materials on hold for pickup at the Law Library and return HCPL materials here, too, including items borrowed from other HCPL locations.
A Knowledge Card also opens the door to HCPL's substantial collection of online resources. For legal researchers, one particularly useful resource is Gale Legal Forms, which provides access to forms and other materials on subjects such as wills, leases, powers of attorney, and more. Beyond legal research, HCPL offers digital books and audiobooks and an impressive array of research, educational, career, business, language-learning, and other online resources.
Sign-up to access legal resources from home
The Law Library operates a little differently: you do not need a library card to use our resources. Our print legal research collection and our legal research databases are available to visitors in the library, at our location downtown at 1019 Congress St., or from any of our five LAWPod locations throughout Harris County.
Library Card Sign-up Month is also a good opportunity to highlight our remote access databases, namely our LexisNexis Digital eBook Collection, which opens the door to legal research beyond our physical walls. The LexisNexis Digital eBook Collection includes many popular legal treatises, form books, and practice guides, including Dorsaneo’s Texas Litigation Guide, the Texas Transaction Guide, Texas Criminal Practice and Procedure, as well as more than 700 titles published by the American Bar Association. A full list of all titles available in our LexisNexis eBook Digital Collection is here.
The Law Library also provides remote access to EBSCO's Legal Information Reference Center and Legal Source, offering self-help legal materials, forms, legal journals, law reviews, and other research sources. Accessible, user-friendly titles from a publisher called Nolo are available on an array of legal topics in the EBSCO Legal Information Reference Center.
Finally, for eligible self-represented/non-lawyer researchers, free remote Westlaw access is available. Interested Westlaw users can register via our Remote Database Access page and follow the steps to create a OnePass profile.
In other words, you don't need a traditional Law Library card to take some of the Law Library home with you, but you can access a world of legal information and forms by signing up for online access on our website.
Sign up with our law library partner: Texas State Law Library
One additional resource that we at the Harris County Hainsworth Law Library like to share and promote is the Texas State Law Library in Austin, where anyone located in the state of Texas can gain access to all the digital resources—databases and ebooks—available in their comprehensive online collection. Continuing Legal Education materials published by the State Bar of Texas, and immigration law resources included in the American Immigration Law Institute (AILA) database are just two of the more popular resources in the Texas State Law Library’s online collection.
From Library Registration to Voter Registration
In Texas, library cards have another interesting connection to civic participation.
Under Section 20.092 of the Texas Election Code, a public library must provide a person of voting age who applies in person for an original or renewed library card with an opportunity to complete a voter registration application. The law also specifies that libraries use the official voter registration form prescribed by the Texas Secretary of State, which is available, in a variety of languages, at the Law Library.
The connection is fitting. Libraries provide access to the information people need to learn about their communities, understand their government, research the law, and participate in civic life.
Completed applications may be returned to us a the Law Library or submitted to the Harris County voter registrar. The main voter registration office is located nearby at the Harris County Administration Building, 1001 Preston Street, Houston, Texas 77002.
The deadline to register to vote in the November 3, 2026 election is Monday, October 5, 2026. Texans who are unsure whether they are already registered can check their registration status through the Texas Secretary of State's VoteTexas website.
Three Ways to Expand Your Access This September
During Library Card Sign-up Month, consider making one visit to the Law Library to accomplish several things:
Get connected to HCPL. Register for a Knowledge Card and discover everything Harris County Public Library has to offer.
Take legal research beyond the library. Ask us about registering for the LexisNexis Digital eBook Collection and accessing our other remote legal research resources.
Check your voter registration. If you are eligible and need to register, pick up a voter registration application while you're here—well ahead of the October 5 deadline.
This September, we invite you to stop by the Law Library and discover just how many doors a library can open. Get access to information, learning opportunities, and connections to the community around us.