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The following is support material related to a library instruction session conducted by a library instructor and a BHCC Behavioral Science Department course instructor.

Finding Information about the Paralegal Profession

Instructor: Prof. Andrea Durkin

September 20, 2000

For today's session you have been asked by your instructor to answer some questions about the paralegal profession in the United States and put those answers together in a research paper. The library has a great deal of information available to help you in your research task. This information can be taken from books, material in any of our subsciption databases, or from sites on the World Wide Web.Don't neglect any of these sources or you may miss out. Remember that this class session is as much about what you locate, retrieve and produce for your instructor as it is about the process you follow to produce the end product.

Let's start by looking at material in books....

The best place to begin looking for books is the Bunker Hill Community College Online Catalog. The catalog is easy to get to if you have a connection to the internet and you are using a World Wide Webbrowser.

One book you may find useful for your assignment is The Occupational Outlook Handbook.. You can give the catalog a try by doing a search to identify the call number for this book. If you are unsureabout how information is organized within the library, take a look at the Library of Congress Subject Headings list. Gaining a working knowledge of the subject headings which cover your research areas will help you proceed efficiently. Look for those headings which are relevant to your coursework.

  • HF is Commerce - business and career-oriented material

  • KF is American Law and the American Legal system

    Subscription Databases

    If you are looking for magazine articles, one good place to go is the EBSCO online subscription database. The EBSCO database contains 16 smaller databases each covering a different subject area. After entering the database, use the Choose A Database and then the Magazine Search icons to determine for yourself which one will serve you best for the activities related to this assignment.

    To get to EBSCO:

    From on-campus, go to: http://search.epnet.com/login.asp?profile=web

    From off-campus, go to: http://search.epnet.com/cpidlogin.asp?custid=noble&ip=yes&profile=web and enter your 14 digit ID number from the back of your BHCC ID card.

    Don't overlook the Boston Globe 1980+ and ProQuest Direct for full text newspaper articles. Proquest Direct allows you to search current and back issues of the New York Times, International Herald Tribune and The Boston Herald. The full text versions of the Globe and Proquest databases are only available on computers connected to the Internet on the BHCC campus so plan your search time carefully.

    A third subscription database that is of special interest to those in the legal field is Lexis-Nexis. The Lexis-Nexis family of databases includes a vast storehouse of legal information. Here you have access to statutes from all fifty states as well as the United States Code; all state and Federal appellate cases including the U.S. Supreme Court. If you have a legal citation and want to see the case, or if you are interested in a particular area of the law and want to find cases or statutes related to that topic, you can find them here. In addition, the "News" database includes full-text articles from major newspapers across the country as well as major English-language international newspapers. (Note: A user ID and password is required for access to this database. This information will be provided during your library workshop. This ID/password combination will be valid until October 1, 2000. After that date, please return to this web page for updated information.

    Web Links

    Here is a list of websites that may be of value in this and related courses...