From the Archives: Into the Computer Age

On January 29, 1988 (22 years ago today), the student newspaper The Alledger announced to the BC Law School student community that BCLS was finally entering the computer age by building a temporary computer center in the Law Library basement, to be followed by a permanent center on Newton Campus. Previously, law students had to travel to main campus to use the computer center at O'Neill library.

According to the article, written by John C. Reilly:

The administration was quick to recognize the need [for a computer center], but reluctant to put the plan into immediate action; feeling that many law students might already have personal computers by the time they reach graduate school. However, ... the L.S.A. convinced the Dean and the administration of the strong student support for such a facility; stressing the limited budgets of law students to by personal computers and special needs that law students have to be close to the school library, which contains almost all of their research materials.

Almost precisely a year later, The Alledger announced the opening of the permanent computer center on January 24, 1989. This "state of the art" center hosted 25 MacIntosh SE personal computers, pre-loaded with Microsoft Word, MacPaint, Excel, Pagemaker, and powerpoint. As quoted from then Dean Coquillette:

The center permits three things, ... first, there is increased fairness for students who can't afford their own computer. This will give them access to the same resources as others have. Second, the room is designed to be a classroom and is set up for teaching. Third, it puts us on the cutting edge of the future.

Read both articles in full below, and check out the issues they came from (Vol. 8, no. 7 and Vol. 9, no. 6 respectively) over in our digital archive: https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/alledger/