INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
March 3, 2002
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #61 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…..

Notable News

FirstGov Gets a Van Susteren
Plagued by complaints of user-unfriendliness, the U.S. portal FirstGov unveiled its new site this week, with promises that you can find what you want in no more than three mouse clicks.

An Even Faster Google
Google’s search features are pretty fast, but this version of Google is WAY fast. For the no-frills searcher.

Most Popular Doesn’t Always Mean the Best
Jupiter Media Metrix has released a list of the 10 most popular search engines, based on search traffic. MSN and Yahoo are neck-and-neck at the top of the list.

It Got Cold in Here All of a Sudden
Four major law schools, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation unveiled ChillingEffects.org this week, a site designed to educate Internet users about their legal rights in response to cease-and-desist letters designed to restrict online activities.

I received several e-mails regarding last week’s issue:

In response to my article on Administrative Law Resources, P.S. wrote “I like the organization of Washlaw’s agency webpage. A page at WashLaw that I think is handy is the full-text search of U.S. government Internet periodicals.

T.M. wrote “Most agencies’ web pages can be found pretty quickly with a Google search, but if someone wants a list of agencies with links to their home pages, there are a few good ones from which to choose:

Library of Congress
FirstGov
Washington Post

Also, the United States Government Manual is an indispensable source of information on the agencies (as well as all branches of the government), including personnel and contact info.”

And in response to my query on skip trace site Accurint, D.J. said “we frequently use Accurint for skip tracing purposes. Rate it 5 out of 5 – easy to use, nice format, good information, cheap.”

Thanks for all the great responses!

Search Engines v. Directories – The Rematch

Back in 2000, I discussed the differences between search engines and directories. Given that the newsletter has several new readers since then, and the Jupiter Media Metrix survey results released this week, I thought it was a good time for a refresher course.

As I’ve said before, the most important thing you can do before beginning an Internet search is to think about the best place to start. Sometimes you know the site you are looking for, you just don’t know its address; sometimes, you have no idea what you’re looking for, and you want a general idea of the subject matter. Still other times you might want all the Internet has to offer on a subject. The search tool you will use for each of these searches can, and often should, be different.

Chris Sherman, who writes the excellent SearchDay newsletter, has a great comparison of search engines and directories in his May 14, 2001 issue. Simply put, consider the two as different parts of a book. A directory is similar to the table of contents in a book – it does not give you specific information, but it will point you in the direction of potentially relevant resources. A search engine, on the other hand, is more like the index, in that it catalogs the specific words or concepts mentioned in the book, and shows you exactly where they are. Each is valuable in its own way.

Internet Directories are generally compiled by humans, whereas search engines are purely computer-driven. The most popular directory is Yahoo!. Here you can browse the topics and sub-topics, and drill down until you find more specific links. For this reason, you can probably find higher quality sites through a search directory, because they have been reviewed and annotated by the human editors. There are two down sides to human intervention, however; first, directories tend to be smaller than search engines, because humans can never do as much work as a computer. Second, directories tend to reflect those sites that the humans compiling them find important – therefore, you might not find the sites YOU believe are important.

Search directories are generally best when you are not familiar with a subject, or when you want to get a good general idea of what the Internet has to offer on that issue. There are not many general search directories out there – the major ones are Yahoo!, Open Directory, and LookSmart. Google has also compiled a directory from its search engine, but it is not compiled by humans like the others. In a way, this may make it more useful, because it combines the thoroughness of a search engine with a directory’s ease of use.

Search engines, by contrast, are run almost completely by computers. Small computer programs called “spiders” or “robots” scour the Internet indexing millions of Web pages every day. The keywords from the pages found are then placed into the search engine’s database; when you attempt a search on one of these engines, you are actually querying the database, not the entire Internet. In response to your request the search engine attempts to return pages with keywords similar to your query, with adjustments made for relevance.

The issue of relevance is the search engine’s major weakness over the directory. Since the search engine cannot divine the true intent of your search, it can only make a guess based on the combination of query terms, and a computer algorithm then attempts to present results with the most likely relevant at the top of the list. The search engine doesn’t always get it right, however. A directory is much more likely to get you to relevant websites, because you control the direction of the search with your browsing. That’s why search engines are best for two types of searches – 1) where you know exactly where you want to go, but you just don’t know (or can’t remember) the address, and 2) where you want a comprehensive listing of sites on your subject.

There are many more search engines than directories on the Internet, each with varying degrees of success. As stated above, MSN Search and Yahoo (not an engine, mind you) were most POPULAR, with over 60% of Web surfers using these sites for their searches. However, they are not necessarily the most accurate in terms of relevant sites returned. In third place with 24% of the audience was Google, which is one of the more accurate search engines around. Keep the accuracy issue in mind when choosing a search engine, and try a few to find the one that suits your search needs best. Here are a few of the current search engines:

Google
Teoma
WiseNut
MSN Search
FAST Search
Lycos
AltaVista

Every few weeks, I review a new search engine that is trying to “get it better” than the rest. As the Jupiter Media Metrix search makes clear, unfortunately, most people are sacrificing accuracy for name brand. If you have a search engine or directory you’d like reviewed here, just drop me a line and I’ll give it a shot!

Help Desk

A vocabulary tip this week:

ADWARE: a software application that displays advertising banners while a program is running. Usually integrated into free software as a way for software developers to recover costs or generate revenue. Many of these adware programs also collect user information and upload it to the developer without explicit permission from the user. For this reason, adware is often called “spyware” or “trackware.”

If you want to find out if you have adware on your computer, download and run CNET’s free CatchUp, or AdAware, another useful program used for detecting and removing adware.

Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me a line at tmighell@swbell.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

Center for Immigration Studies
My, what small print on this page. This is the Internet home of the Center for Immigration Studies, a non-partisan, non-profit organization founded in 1985 and devoted exclusively to the analysis of economic, social, demographic, fiscal and other impacts of immigration on the United States. The small print on the left hand side of the page lists the latest news on immigration issues; the small print on the right side describes common topics in immigration. These topics include history, current numbers, legal and illegal immigration, refugees and asylum, guest workers, and more. There’s an employer sanctions database where you can find information on employers who have been penalized for employing illegal immigrants. Warning: although this site has a lot of great resources, it does not appear to have been updated since November of 2000 – proceed with caution.

Divorce Source
Divorce Source is such a busy place I don’t know quite where to start. The site appears to be geared both to lawyers and consumers, so it may be guilty of trying to be all things to all people. You can search for divorce case law by keyword, or choose one of the Divorce Research Center categories, of which there are many. There’s a listing of divorce laws by state, forms for you to download, divorce manuals, and much more. Spend a while here and you might find something for your family law research.

Competitive Intelligence Strategies & Tools
Competitive Intelligence is the systematic gathering, analyzing, and managing of information that can affect a company’s decisions, plans, and operations. If you’re doing research on a particular company, chances are you’re engaged in some sort of competitive intelligence. Fuld & Company, a corporation dedicated to the field, presents this page of general business and industry-specific Internet resources for CI research. The General Business section has links to annual reports, associations, corporate filings, government agencies, IPOs, statistics, and much more. The Industries represented include agriculture, apparel, construction, energy, mining, insurance, trade, publishing, and others. This is a terrific page of links to keep handy when starting your CI research.

West LegalEdCenter Online CLE ($$)
Have I mentioned this site before? No matter, it’s worth a re-mention. West offers this online selection of CLE programs, from local, state and national CLE providers. You can choose your CLE program by practice area, CLE provider, Accredited Jurisdiction, or by specialty credit. For example, Texas lawyers can take advantage of 18 programs, ranging from Federal Civil Procedure to Juvenile Law to Recruiting, Hiring and Retaining Employees. Prices run from $75.00 to $120.00 on average, depending on whether you purchase the audio or video version of the presentation. A great idea if you’re behind on your CLE credits for the year.

Government Redistricting Websites
Sponsored by Purdue University, this site is a timely resource now that the census has caused the various congressional districts to realign. A simple page, with links to redistricting sites for the 50 states, along with the Census Bureau’s redistricting information page.

Finally, a useful site. Trying to find a book, but don’t remember much about it? ISBN.nu can help! Just type in some of the words from the title, or the author, or even the subject, and ISBN.nu will find your book for you. Then you can run a comparative price search to see the best prices on the Web for your book.

Well, that’s it for Issue #61– 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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