Welcome to the Boston College Law Library! This newsletter is one way the Library works to provide you information about services and collections. We hope you will find that the Library is a friendly and comfortable place to study, to research the law, to work with classmates in group study spaces, and to sit quietly and read. All the staff and I are here to help you find and use materials here in the Library and in electronic formats through the library's website and other electronic access points. If you have questions about finding or using printed or digital resources, or about library policies, please ask for help at the Information Desk.

We welcome your suggestions and look forward to meeting and working with each of you over the next three years. Best wishes for a most successful first year!

Peace, Filippa

Filippa Marullo Anzalone

Professor and Associate Dean for Library and Computing Services, Law School

Here are the welcoming remarks of Rita Jones, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid, Orientation, 8/29/06 in which Dean Jones "presented ... a small slice of the wonderful class of 2009."

The Law Student Computing Support Help Center is located in room 205 of the Law Library. During the first two weeks of school, the Help Center will be open Monday through Friday from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. The Help Center hours for the rest of the Fall Semester will be posted soon outside the door to room 205. In addition, the Help Center hours will be posted soon in the Counselor.

To get more information about various technology issues, you can click on the Law Library's technology page.

Your instructor may ask you to look at an item in Course Reserves. You can find a listing of materials by instructor's name or course name. To do this, check the Course Reserves database in the library catalog (to access this database, click on "Course/Online Reserves" tab; you will then be prompted for your username/password). Reserve materials, which must be used in the library, are available at the Information Desk, and may be borrowed for 2 hours. You will need your BC ID to check out course reserve materials.

NOTE: Food is not permitted in the library. Beverages are permitted in spill-resistant mugs with snug-fitting snap-on lids or in squeeze bottles. The library distributes spill-resistant mugs to all first-year law students. Sports bottle tops are also available at the Information Desk. Help protect our collection and facilities with an official spill-resistant BC Law School mug. Ask for yours at the Information Desk.

Use the Law Library's home page as your research starting point. The site provides quick links to course webpages, Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw, the library catalog, and a portal to thousands of databases and legal sites, as well as to electronic research guides created by law librarians here at Boston College.

Legal research skills will be part of your first year curriculum. BC Law provides access to two major research databases, LexisNexis and Westlaw, for all law students through its academic subscription contracts. You will receive your own passwords for LexisNexis and Westlaw searching from your LRR&W (Legal Reasoning, Research and Writing) research instructor during the first week of classes. At that time, you will learn how to register these passwords and log into the systems. You will use these passwords throughout your three years at BC Law.

If you have any problems logging in, please feel free to come to the Library's Information Desk and request the help of a Reference Librarian.