Tara Calishain is the co-author of Official Netscape Guide to Internet Research, 2nd Edition, and author or co-author of four other books. She is the owner of CopperSky Writing & Research.
In This Issue:
“Finding Court Opinions On The Web”
Government Seeks Secure Network
USAToday: October 12, 2001.
Great State Resources I Missed — Montana
Northern Light Starts Special Edition for Windows XP
LLRXBu zz Tour of 50 State Web Sites
LLRXBu zz Archives : April 3, 2000 – Present
LLRXBuzz Research Tip Archives
The Latest on Legal Research
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“Finding Court Opinions On The Web”
The National Law Journal adapted this site, at http://www.nlj.com/special/courts.shtml, from Robert Ambrogi’s book, The Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web. Links are included to opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Circuit Courts and U.S. District Courts. U.S. Bankruptcy Courts opinions are listed by state, the courts without follow the courts with opinions.
The Specialized U.S. Courts links include opinions from the late ’90s, except the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces which lists opinions from 1996. State Courts, including Guam, are listed alphabetically. There’s a lot to this site, so give it a minute to load. (The upside is that everything is one page, and foremost of the links the whole URL is included, which means you could print out the page if you like.)
The U.S. News & World Report has teamed up with brandon-hall.com to offer a vendor directory at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/elearning/search.htm. The database contains software vendors that offer training tools. You can search for a company by entering part or all of its name. The advanced search options allows searching by keyword, by clientele (corporate, non-profit, consumer, etc.) or from a drop-down list of product offerings.
Search results include the company name. But click on the name and you’ll get plenty of additional information, including contact information, a corporate
profile and a look at its e-learning focus. The records also provides a breakdown of the type of client the company targets, such as corporate, academic or government, and a list of recent clients. Some vendor
records include a customer satisfaction ranking. Looks like you’ll have to actually go to the vendor’s site to get information about products, though. Worth a look for preliminary research.
Government Seeks Secure Network
USAToday: October 12, 2001.
Newly appointed Cyberspace security advisor Richard Clarke, is looking to the computer industry to develop a secure telecommunications network that will be used exclusively by the government. Under the name GOVNET, this network will be used for voice and data communications and will not access the WWW.
Earlier in his role on the National Security Council, Clarke stressed the Internet’s vulnerability to a digital attack which could disrupt communications.
Experts testifying on Capital Hill echoed those warnings when the they said computer systems designers today are using unsafe methods and have limited
security training.
While a deadline has not been set for awarding the contract, the government expects GOVNET to be up and running within six months of selecting a contractor. One idea from a former computer crimes prosecutor is that the secure systems currently be used by the CIA and DOD could possibly be expanded to form GOVNET.
Get more information by reading the full article here.
Great State Resources I Missed — Montana
During the Great State Tour this summer, some readers were vociferous when I missed a resource they found particularly good. I got so many reproaches and URLs that I felt like I’d barely scraped the surface — which is exactly the case! So for the next several issues I’ll bring you up to speed on the ones I missed. (And it’s not too late to send in your own state
favorites that I might not have seen.)
(Personal to the person who wrote me about GALILEO: please drop me an e-mail. I have a couple questions for you.)
Today we’ll take a look at the State Law Library of Montana, at http://www.lawlibrary.state.mt.us. There are several sections on this site; we’ll hit the highlights. One immediate highlight are Montana Supreme Court Opinions/Orders from 1994 on. That page also has an Montana Supreme Court Oral Argument Calendar and a link for recently-filed briefs.
The Montana Courts and Judicial Districts page links you to several different court sets, including district courts, tribal courts, and justices of the peace. There’s a mailing list for Montana judges and links to other courts, including water court and small claims court.
The Montana Legal Information Page provides you with a variety of — um — Montana legal information. Anyway, information includes an available PDF guide to Montana legal research, a link to Montana’s Constitution, a mailing list for Montana attorneys, a weekly digest of Montana law, Montana legal forms (the ones available are in PDF; there are also links to other sites which
have forms), and more.
This is an excellent site. Montana, I’m sorry I overlooked it before.
Northern Light Starts Special Edition for Windows XP
Northern Light has launched another one of their “special editions,” this time for the new operating system Windows XP. The site contains over 65 links in
11 different sections, as well as selected documents from Northern Light’s special collections. Access it at http://special.northernlight.com/windowsxp/ .
I must say this is much better organized than other Northern Light collections I’ve seen. Graphics are kept to a minimum and resources are laid out
carefully. As long as you’re here, check out the new design of Northern Light. It’s a lot cleaner and friendlier than it used to be.
I know I recently covered a site that listed K-12 libraries in the US. How about public libraries in Europe?
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/ac940/eurolib.html lists European countries from Albania to Yugoslavia. Pick one (I chose Finland) and you’ll get a brief entry to meta-links to libraries for that country (Finland, for example, has a gateway to public libraries at http://www.publiclibraries.fi/) and listings of individual libraries. A small British flag indicates those sites which are in English, while a gold star indicates exceptional sites.
I would like to see a little more annotation here, and a few more sites, but this is an unusual and helpful aggregate of information.