Joan Shear is a Legal Information Librarian and Lecturer in Law. She joined Boston College Law Library in 1986 and expanded the library’s role in classroom teaching of legal research, providing in-class instruction to students in Legal Reasoning Research and Writing beginning in 1990. Her Environmental Legal Research course was developed for the Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, to which Shear was the library liaison for many years. She is also the library liaison to the BC Intellectual Property and Technology Forum.
Before joining Boston College Law School, she was a reference librarian at Harvard Law Library. She also provided reference service at the Law Library of Congress while in library school.
Shear has developed legal research and legal reference courses for the Law Librarians of New England and the American Association of Law Libraries and has held a number of leadership roles in both organizations.
