If your research involves topic other than law, like economics, history, business or sociology, you will need to locate scholarly publications in those areas. The Boston College University Libraries provides access to a wide range of resources covering non-legal subjects.
As a starting point, review a BC University Library Research Guide on your subject. These guides will provide an overview of the University resources available on that subject and provide tips on how to begin your research.
If you need to locate scholarly articles on non-legal topics, you can start by searching the BC Library Catalog. The Catalog will include articles from a number of disciplines including, economics, history, and sociology. Most articles will be available electronically and can be downloaded to PDF.
You will also want to review the All BC Research Databases list which contains links to subscription services that contain articles on non-legal topics. You can filter the list by subject to identify the most relevant databases. Or take a look at the BC Research Guides on the topic you are researching to help you identify the best resources for your research assignment.
Free resources like Google Scholar and SSRN are also good places to search for articles. When searching Google Scholar your results will provide you with instructions on whether the articles are available at Boston College and provide you with access to the full text.
To locate books on a on non-legal topics, you can search the BC Law Library Catalog. The catalog contains records of books held across all BC University libraries. If you find a book you want to check out that is located at another BC Library, follow the instructions to request that it be checked out and delivered to the Law School campus which can be found on the Locating Books at BC page of this Research Guide.
If you cannot locate a book on your topic at a BC library, you can search WorldCat to locate books available at other libraries. Once you have identified relevant books, you can request them via interlibrary loan using the instructions on the Getting Materials Not at BC page of this Research Guide.
If your research involves searching news stories, you have a number of options. BC subscribes to a number of news databases that cover both current and historical news. Using the available subscription services rather than running a Google search ensures that you don't encounter paywalls and can efficiently access the full text of a story.
Both Westlaw and Lexis contain news databases. We recommend selecting the News databases from the Content tab and then selecting the specific news content you need. Westlaw and Lexis will provide coverage of newspapers back to the late 1980's or early 1990's.
If your research involves historical news, the Boston College libraries subscribe to over 40 databases that allow you to search digitized U.S. and international newspapers including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other major papers. You can find a list of historical news databases by going the All BC Research Databases list on the Law Library's website and filtering by Database Type, Historical Newspapers. Or check out the BC Library's Guide to Historical Newspaper Guide for more information on the materials that are available.
