INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
January 13, 2002
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #55 of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, a newsletter that delivers relevant and timely legal research information, and other fun stuff, to your inbox every Sunday. If you like what you read, please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to do the same! To subscribe, all you have to do is send an e-mail to ilrw-subscribe@topica.com. It’s free!
And away we go…..
News of Note
RIP: Free Northern Light Searches
For those of you who use the Northern Light search engine, some sad news -- beginning January 16 the service will no longer be providing free web search capabilities to the general public.Cybercourts Are Here!
Michigan becomes the first state to debut an online state court, which will have jurisdiction over business and commercial complaints in disputes over $25,000.…While Other States Want Citizens To Help Themselves
California and Indiana offer sites to help citizens to understand and participate in the court system. Will this drive work away from attorneys?….And Still Others Are Moving Towards E-Filing
LawCommerce.com offers its yearly review of e-filing projects around the country.New IRS Addresses For You
If you’re interested, the IRS has established new mailing addresses to which you can send your tax return.Want to List Your Firm Website on Yahoo? Cha-Ching!
Yahoo has announced it is now charging an annual fee of $299 to list your business in its commercial areas.Gateways to the Invisible Web
The Invisible Web is all the rage nowadays among people interested in searching the Internet. As I’ve mentioned here before, the Invisible Web contains vast resources that conventional search engines don’t reach. Finding Invisible Web resources is a little like getting to NeverNeverLand; how can you find something you can’t even see? This week, my friend and law librarian Sharon McClelland offers five routes to the Invisible Web, some familiar, some not so well-known.
First up is an old standby, the Librarian’s Index to the Internet. The Index started in 1990 and is maintained by California librarians. There are over forty general subject areas offered, including Arts, Law, Politics, and Weather – those areas are further divided into subtopics. The Law topic alone has subcategories such as Dispute Resolution, Native Americans, and Treaties. Each of the site’s 8,000+ links is annotated and searchable by title, subject, and description. This is a terrific site, especially when you want a quick general view of a particular topic.
More legally-related is the Legal Information Institute from Cornell University. It's an extraordinarily expansive legal research tool, and much more than just a gateway to the Invisible Web. Broad categories include Constitutions and Codes, Opinions, Law by Source or Jurisdiction, Directories, and Current Awareness. The first menu offering is “Law About…,” and it’s a great place to start. Each area of law is presented in detail, with links to statutes, governmental sites, and other links on the topic. A must-have resource for your Favorites folder.
Still more specialized is the Texas Law Librarian’s Site. Don’t be put off by this name if you’re not from Texas; there are still some great resources for everyone here. This site is maintained by a Texas law librarian, and while it does emphasize Texas legal sources, there is a section on Federal Resources quickly linking the researcher to all major sources such as CFR, US Courts, and other sites. The layout is not very sophisticated, but you can find tons of great information.
Jurist describes itself as a “mini portal to peer-reviewed online legal resources.” This site is hosted by the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. Eachof the 26 subject areas have been created by law professors, with categories such as Administrative Law, Contracts, Health Law, and Property. As with most online directories, there are subtopics including News, Books, Cases, Associations, Article Abstracts, and Course Pages. While the resources here are pretty impressive, I was disappointed that most of the articles I find are dated between 1997 and 1999. For all I know, the site may be updated regularly – it just doesn’t look like it.
Finally, a non-legal Invisible Web portal for you. Hardin’s Meta Directory is maintained by the Hardin Library of Health Science at the University of Iowa. The Directory claims to “list the best sites that list the sites.” There are over fifty medical categories provided on the home page, and clicking on a topic takes you to one of three “lists.” First you’ll get the Large Lists – links to sites with long lists of websites on the subject. You’ll also find (you guessed it) Medium Lists and Small Lists. Many of the lists provided are actually just links to some of the better search engines, which automatically perform the search on that topic for you. There are also many specialized medical search engines included in the lists, so you’re really getting into the meat of the Invisible Web with these sites.
Okay, two final Invisible Web sites from me. First up is the Resource Discovery Network, a fantastic British site. RDN combines the power of five search “Hubs:” BIOME for health and life sciences, EEVL for engineering, mathematics, and computing, HUMBUL for humanities, PSIGATE for physical sciences, and SOSIG for social sciences, business and law. While you can browse for subcategories on a particular topic, you can also enter a keyword search on each subcategory page to do a search within that particular category. Many of the resources you find here will be British, but there are also many U.S.-related links to explore as well.
Last but certainly not least is Invisible-Web.Net, a companion website to the book “The Invisible Web,” by Chris Sherman and Gary Price (hi Gary!). The site is very simply designed, but the resources are tremendous. Selecting “Reference” took me to a page where I could choose among any of fifteen subcategories. Each subcategory takes you to a list of excellent links on each topic. While you’re there, you should also buy the book – it’s great!
Although there’s only one way to get to NeverNeverLand, there are many ways to get to the Invisible Web; this is just a start. Look for more roadmaps in the future!
Help Desk
Weekly Computer Maintenance – Step #1:
For the next five issues, I want to discuss simple things each of you should be doing once a week to make sure your computer is in tip-top condition. The first tip is to make sure you UPDATE YOUR VIRUS DEFINITIONS weekly. How to do this? If you have Norton Antivirus, the LiveUpdate feature will automatically update your virus definitions every four or five days; you can customize the program to update your definitions even when you’re not at your computer. McAfee has a similar update program (go to File, then select Update VirusScan). If you’re not sure how to update your antivirus program, go to your manufacturer’s website and search around for areas like “downloads,” “updates,” or “technical support.” If your antivirus program is up to snuff, there will be a way to update your virus definitions. New viruses emerge EVERY WEEK – make sure you don’t get caught.
Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net – I’ll post your question (don’t worry, I won’t use your real name) and try to get an answer for you!
Legally Relevant – Sites on the Internet
CorpWatch
CorpWatch counters “corporate-led globalization” through education and activism. The site seeks to “hold corporations accountable,” and there are some pretty neat resources here to do that. There’s an area where you can read up on CorpWatch’s current campaigns, as well as an issue library on topics such as Biotechnology, Globalization 101, Oil, Gas, and Coal, Trade Agreements, and the IMF. Also useful is its Research area, where you can do Industry Research or research on Corporations and Politics. The best part of the site for me, though, is the Hands On Corporate Research Guide, which provides a great tutorial on researching businesses on the Internet, with lots of links to boot. If you are new to researching businesses on the Internet, this is a great primer.OSHA Establishment Search
This page from OSHA’s site allows you to search for OSHA enforcement inspections by the name of the establishment. Just plug in the name of the business you’re searching for and you’ll get a listing of any OSHA inspections conducted there since 1972. There are several other ways to customize this search. A great tool to discover dirty secrets that defendant corporation is hiding.Hong Kong Legal Information Institute
Since we’ve already covered the United States LII, we might as well visit Hong Kong’s version (there are also others – you can search them out yourself, or wait for upcoming issues!). The information provided here is similar to that of the U.S. LII, but not quite as extensive. You can find court cases from 1992 to the present, from the Lands Tribunal, Family Court, District Court, and my personal favorite, the Court of Final Appeal (I had no idea it was in Hong Kong). You can also find ordinances and historical laws, and other Hong Kong practice information.LEDA
LEDA stands for Legal Electronic Documents Archive, and it’s a joint project of Cornell’s Legal Information Institute (they’re EVERYWHERE, aren’t they?), Harvard Law School Library, and Duke University School of Law. LEDA is accepting such types of documents as published articles, working papers, theses, and lectures. They convert the articles to HTML or PDF for download by authors, digital librarians, attorneys, law students, or other researchers. The only problem I had: try as I might, I can’t find any articles here! First I tried to browse the collection by subject – there are a LOT of subjects available. Unfortunately, there was an “Internal Error” which prevented me from seeing anything; hopefully this will be corrected. Next, I tried to find articles by the search terms. I entered names of famous law school professors from around the country – nothing. I couldn’t even find articles by Duke Law School professors. I think LEDA is a fantastic idea – I just hope its content lives up to its promise.Packaging Law
This is another specialty website presented by a law firm – an idea I really like. Packaging Law is sponsored by Keller and Heckman, a D.C. firm with offices in Belgium and California. Here you can find a wealth of information on packaging. There are news articles (pretty recent – December is the latest), Monthly Focus articles, Food Contact Notification, and an Ask an Attorney feature. You can sign up for e-mails to be notified when new content becomes available, too.Finally, some fun and useful sites for you to peruse this week:
The Industrious Clock is completely useless, but it’s also pretty fascinating to watch – I really started to believe it was someone writing out all those numbers as the clock ticked by!
Do you have a talent for telling people bad news? You might want to become a Wakaresaseya, the latest fad in Japan. These individuals are hired to go to your significant other and break up with them for you.
While parts of the country are in the midst of winter, cancellations of schools and businesses are a daily concern. Head over to Cancellations.com. There you can enter your Zip Code and find out any cancellations for your area. I’m not
sure how useful this site will be, because I think it depends on companies sending the information to the website.Well, that’s it for Issue #55– I hope you liked it! If you did, pass this along to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to subscribe. Also, feel free to drop me an e-mail any time if you have questions, or if you have websites or other topics you want included in a future issue.
Tom Mighell
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