September 16, 2007

Welcome to Issue #279 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 visit Inter Alia and fill out the subscription form -- it's free!

Finding a Home (Page)
What's *your* home page? At work, our browsers are defaulted to pop up with MSN home page -- boring! For a while I used CNN as my home page, to get an idea of the current news -- but it just wasn't enough. I wanted to be able to see sports scores, my local weather, news, and other things when my browser opened first thing in the morning. Fortunately, there are a number of customizable home pages that will give you just that experience. Trouble is, there are a lot of personalized home pages out there -- how to tell which one is right for you? Mashable has this review of 14 Personalized Homepages Compared, Feature by Feature, so you can make your own decision. I'm partial to Netvibes, Pageflakes, and iGoogle, but maybe one of the others will suit you better.

Blawgs of the Week
Here are a few of the law-related weblogs featured on Inter Alia this past week:

Caught in the 'Net

Pinpointing your Web Cites

Citebite is an interesting new tool that can help you link directly to quotes on web site pages. Just paste the text you're quoting into the dialog box, include the URL where the quote came from, and voila! You'll get a URL that takes you back to that page, with the quoted passage highlighted in yellow.

Here's an example: in a recent post on August's ILTA convention, my friend Dennis Kennedy noted that one of the dominant themes to him was SharePoint, SharePoint, and more SharePoint. Just click on the link, and it will take you directly to his comments on this. Pretty cool.

Even better, you don't have to visit this site every time you want to create a Citebite. There's a bookmarklet and a Firefox extension you can install into your browser that will accomplish this task while you're on the source page.

Now, the page that's created is actually a Citebite page, which will probably raise some copyright questions. But if you scroll up to the top of the page you'll notice a "shade" at the top with a link to the source page. This may not be good enough to eliminate the possible confusion visitors may have when visiting the repurposed page, but I still think it's a nifty way to cite to web pages.

Here's a quick and easy Word tip for you this week. If you hit the wrong key and no longer see the text you were trying to edit in a document, it's easy to get back to where you were, with just two keystrokes. Use Shift+F5 to backtrack to your most recent edit location. You can use it at least 3 (maybe 4) more times to go back even further. The same keystroke works in both Word 2003 and 2007, but don't confuse it with the Undo function -- it doesn't undo the work you just did, it simply takes you back to the location of your last edit.

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!

American College of Rheumatology
The ACR is "an organization of and for physicians, health professionals, and scientists that advances rheumatology through programs of education, research, advocacy and practice support that foster excellence in the care of people with arthritis and rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases." As with most membership sites, the majority of the resources are for members only. However, there are a few gems you can find here if you're doing research on rheumatology. There are several publications available, practice guidelines, quality measures, practice support tools and documents, and more.

Education Commission of the States
This is a BIG site, with tons of great information on education. The purpose of the ECS is to help states develop effective policy and practice for public education by providing data, research, analysis and leadership. There's a whole A-Z index on education issues, from Access to Vouchers, as well as reports that allow you to compare educational programs on a state-by-state basis. You can subscribe to a number of education-related newsletters, and RSS feeds, too. Also, check out the links to federal agencies, national organizations, research centers, and other education resources.

Hieros Gamos Employment Law Page
Hieros Gamos was one of the first legal research guides to appear on the Internet, and it looks like it's still going strong. This page is simply a list of links on issues of employment and labor law, divided into different categories. Sites are listed from the United States, Supranational Issues, National Regimes, Other Resources, Internet and Non-Internet Publications,and Associations. Nothing magic here -- just a good list of links to keep in your Favorites.

Uniform Crime Reports
This page is part of the FBI website, and it provides crime statistics and reports in a variety of categories. The first is Crime in the United States, which provides data back to 1995. You'll also find Hate Crime Statistics back to the same time, as well as documentation on Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted. The UCR guidebook provides information on how law enforcement agencies report crimes to the program, and there are also materials regarding the National Incident-Based Reporting System.

Swiss Legal System and Research
Every now and then I love to return to the GlobaLex site maintained by the Hauser Global Law School Program at NYU School of Law. They have such great legal research guide, and this one is no exception. It's written by Gregory Bovey, an attorney in Geneva, Switzerland. The page features information on the political, legislative, and judicial structure of Switzerland, along with links to sites on each subject. There's access to law schools and journals, as well as case law and legislation from various parts of the country.

Do you miss your Etch-A-Sketch? I could play for hours on that thing. Now you can revisit your childhood (or your child's childhood) with the online Etch-A-Sketch. It shakes to clear itself, too!

Are you a reader? Check out Booklist, the publication of the American Library Association -- it features over 8,000 book reviews each year.

Well, that’s it for Issue #279 – 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.

Subscription Information: If you want to keep on receiving issues of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net, or visit Inter Alia and sign up there! If you no longer want to receive the newsletter, just click on the link at the bottom of this newsletter.

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Questions? New websites? Just want to talk? Send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net.