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:
Reader Request/Reader Response: Time/Weather Resources
LLRXBu zz Tour of 50 State Web Sites
LLRXBu zz Archives : April 3, 2000 – Present
The Latest on Legal Research
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The National Anti-Vivisection Society sponsors this site for searching animal-related laws at http://www.animallaw.com/dsp_LawSearch.cfm. You can
search laws by number, name, keyword or select one or more categories. Legislation can be searched by session or year (looks like only the year 2001 and possibly 2002 work) and jurisdiction selection. Jurisdictions include all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Federal.
You can also search by category and jurisdiction. Select one category, or select several using the control key. Same with the jurisdiction drop-down box,
select one or more and select “Add” to move options to the search box. Change your mind? Highlight whatever you want to take out of the search box and select “Remove.” Or click on “Add All” to move all the states to the search box. Before executing this search, make certain you have selected Laws or Legislation under Type. (I couldn’t get the state part of this search
interface to work with Opera, but it worked fine in Mozilla.)
Search results include name, bill/citation, state, and category. The name of the item is hyperlinked. Click on it and you’ll get a direct link to the state’s
legislative site and the text of the law. Unfortunately some of the links led to 404 errors.
Yet another searching option on this site is to search Bibliographies (you can do that from http://www.animallaw.com/dsp_BibliographySearch.cfm.) You can search all the sources or limit your query to one such as All, Books, Videos, Magazine Articles or others. After selecting a source, you have the categories to choose from again, and press Search. Bibliographies can also be searched by Title and Author. Results included bibliography and category; I didn’t see any links to article text.
Media Law Library
Media Law Library (http://www.ijnet.org/Media_Laws_Search.html) covers media law in more than 100 countries around the world. Keyword searching can be of All Countries and All Subjects or narrowed with drop-down selections for countries and subjects. Subjects cover Freedom of Information, Constitutional Provisions, State Protection Laws and more. Media laws can also be viewed by subject. Click on a subject and the laws are listed by country alphabetically. Titles are links leading to the full text.
Media/Assistance News options are listed by Region & Country in the left column. Click on Africa to view region news and a list of African countries. Clicking on a country will provide local news and other options such as News Archive, Country Overview and Press Overview.
The Worldwide option in the left column offers additional resources, such as searching for Web Resources and Training Materials. Another Worldwide option is Codes of Ethics which provides codes by alphabetical list of countries.
The International Journalists’ Network offers a weekly e-mail bulletins and you can also request the ICFJ (International Center for Journalists) newsletter.
Health Canada sponsors this site of tobacco control laws at
http://www.ncth.ca/CCTCLAWweb.nsf/MainFrameSet?OpenFrameSet.
This site offers regulations, statutes, amending bills and relevant sections of non-tobacco laws.
Look to the left for a link to the site’s database for keyword and phrase searching (phrases require quotations). Search results lists the page name,
section and revision date. Additional searchable databases include the Tobacco Library and the Guildford Documents. Results for searching the Library show document records with call numbers. Guildford Documents are viewable in PDF format.
Tabs are listed across the top to view Regions, Subjects, Analysis and Enforcement, as well as a tab to view the site in French. Open Regions for a map to select a region or choose from the list on the side and view legislation in that province. Subjects shows a spread sheet of regulation links within each affected jurisdiction. Analysis covers the effects of tobacco restrictions, while Enforcement provides appropriate contact information by province.
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have put together this database of banking and deposit insurance laws at http://www.gbld.org/. The information here is available in MS Word and PDF downloadable formats.
Jurisdictions range from Argentina to the United States with the most recently updated one marked in red. Click on any of the jurisdictions and receive a list of backing laws that are viewable or downloadable in full text. Each listing also includes the date of last update.
Another way to learn about each jurisdiction is to view the detailed list of 35 topics. Compare one topic in two jurisdictions by selecting a topic and, while
holding down the control key, select two jurisdictions. The final way to search is by keyword, with options to narrow searching by country or document. The keyword will be highlighted within the search results. Worth a look if international law is your thing.
(This last item was from ResearchBuzz, where I’m trying out the idea of having readers ask one question per week and then letting other readers answer the
question. If you’d like to ask a question send it to [email protected]. Tune in to ResearchBuzz.com on Wednesdays to see the questions, and Mondays to see the answers.)
Reader Request/Reader Response: Time/Weather Resources
Wow! Who would have expected such a huge outpouring of responses to last Wednesday’s question about finding the time and weather. Most of the responses I got centered on finding the time. Far fewer focused on the
weather. I can’t possibly list all the responses we got, but here’s a sampling. We’ll have a new reader request section on Wednesday — and this one’s gonna be really, really tough. Thanks to everyone for their responses!
Weather Underground (http://www.wunderground.com) provides local time and weather for what looks like every city in the US and major cities around the
world. (I’m not too clear on their scope.) You can set Wunderground to provide both the local time of the area you’re looking at and your current time, giving
you a simple basis for comparison.
Atomica (http://www.atomica.com) is a downloadable browser add-on which claims to work with any browser (it worked fine in Opera.) Alt-click a word and you’ll get information about it. If you click on a city name you can get both local time and the weather and five- day forecast.
World Time Server (http://www.worldtimeserver.com/) doesn’t provide weather but does make real-time adjustments for daylight savings time.
Time And Date.com (http://www.timeanddate.com/) was the most popular suggestion by far (about 20 people suggested it.) Unfortunately it provides only time and date — no weather — but it does adjust for daylight savings time and provides a quick reference of times around the world at http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/.