COLLECTIONS:

Special Collections

University Archives

Collection Preservation

Research Collections:
Law Library Collection

Collection Overview
The Law Library’s collection supports the teaching, research, writing ,and clinical programs of the Law School community. The Library also supports the undergraduate research of Boston College in a limited fashion, and provides access to its collections to the local legal community. The emphasis of the collection is the primary and secondary legal materials of the United States with an emphasis on Massachusetts material; primary material for England, Ireland, Canada, and Australia; and basic international materials including coverage of the United Nations and European Union.

The Law School offers a program that provides graduates with a Juris Doctor degree. This includes a number of clinical programs as well as a program at King’s College in London. The Law School offers two joint degree programs; a joint J.D./M.B.A. program offered in conjunction with the Carroll School of Management, and a joint J.D./M.S.W. offered with the School of Social Work. The Law Library purchases materials in support of the Juris Doctor portion of these programs. It purchases materials for the other two disciplines as requested, or when those materials support the research needs of another Law School program.

Jonathan Thomas
Collection Development Librarian
617-552-4410
jonathan.thomas@bc.edu

Selected Resources

In the Law Library

• Statutes and reporters for the United States and all fifty states.

• Statutes, statutory instruments and reports for England.

• Revised statutes and session law for all the Canadian provinces.

• Complete collection of United States congressional publications from 1970 to date. (Microfiche)

• Law reviews and journals from all American Bar Association accredited law schools.

• United Nations documents from 1946 to date.

• Bibliographies, Indexes and Abstracts

  • Bibliography of Early American Law

  • Bibliography on Foreign and Comparative Law: Books and Articles in English, 1790/1953-date

  • Congressional Information Service Indexes and Abstracts

  • Current Law Index

  • Federal Tax Articles

  • Index to Canadian Legal Literature

  • Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals

  • Index to Legal Periodicals

  • Index to United Nations Publications

  • Index to United States Treaties (CD-ROM)

• Reference works

  • Encyclopedia of Applied Ethics

  • Encyclopedia of the American Constitution

  • Encyclopedia of the American Presidency

  • International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences

  • Martindale-Hubbell

  • Nuremberg Trial Documents (CD-ROM)

  • Monthly Catalog of United States Government Publications

  • Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and Law

  • West’s Encyclopedia of American Law

On the Web (Restricted to the BC community)

• Full text databases: AccessUN, Congressional Universe

• Full text database (available in the Law Library only): Social Law Libraries' On-line Databases

• Full text databases (password access): LEXIS/NEXIS, LOIS, WESTLAW

• Indexes: Index to Legal Periodicals, Legal Resources Index (available in the Law Library only)

Information Guides
The Law Library’s Information guides can be found at: http://infoeagle.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/lawlib/publica.html.

Interdisciplinary Elements of Subject Area
The University offers two joint degree programs; a joint J.D./M.B.A. program offered in conjunction with the Carroll School of Management, and a joint J.D./M.S.W. offered with the School of Social Work. The Law Library purchases materials in support of the Juris Doctor portion of these programs. It purchases materials for the other two disciplines as requested, or when those materials support the research needs of another Law School program.

Formats and Types of Materials
The Law Library purchases materials in all formats. The primary emphasis is on the purchase of material in paper with an ever-growing number of resources available in electronic format. The majority of primary materials are purchased in paper, with the exception of microform publications of United States congressional, United Nations and European Union documents. The major legal electronic database of LEXIS and WESTLAW duplicate many of the paper holdings and provide additional resources as well. Materials may be purchased only in electronic format, if that method provides a wider distribution and is more economically reasonable.

Languages
The majority of materials collected are published in English, with the exceptions of German and French court reports and codes which are in their native language.

Geographic Areas (Subject Approach)
The Library collects federal and state primary materials. We also collect secondary materials for the individual states on a limited basis. More emphasis is placed on the purchase of secondary materials for the New England states, particularly New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island. We collect secondary materials for Massachusetts in depth.

We also collect primary materials for Canada, England and Ireland and scholarly publications for those jurisdictions. Primary and secondary publications of the European Union and United Nations are also selected for the collection. We also purchase selected court reporters and codes from the Federal Republic of Germany and France as well as selected monographs for these two jurisdictions.

Time Periods (Subject Approach)
Materials currently being published in the United States and elsewhere in the world are eligible for purchase. Older materials are considered for purchase in reprint.

Date of Publication
We purchase current material primarily, with the following exceptions; retrospective material only if it is part of an ongoing title; reprints of important legal monographs; additions to the Library’s rare book collection; and materials requested for course reserve or faculty research.

Accessing the Collections of the Law Library
BCAT, BC Libraries' online catalog, is the database for identifying what titles the Law Libraryr collection contains.  In BCAT if one searches by Title, Author, or Subject one must check under Location to see if the item is at the Law Library.  However, adding the command LL.PUC. (lower or upper case) in a keyword search will isolate the list of items retrieved to only those titles held by the Law Library.  For example, the search
                                  internet and copyright and ll.puc.  (include both dots before and after puc)
will retrieve those records that have the words "internet" and "copyright" in their records and that are in the Law Library.

Subject Areas Collected by Library of Congress Classification Number
Both O'Neill Library and the Law Library contain material for legal research.  BCAT can be searched by LC classification number to get a better idea of what specific titles the O'Neill and Law Library collections contain. For example, the command c=KFM2400 will produce a list of works in the area of Massachusetts law. This list can be browsed by pressing the F8 key or typing f and pressing the Enter/Return key.