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:
Tarlton Law Library’s Center for Legal Research
New York State Launches Counter-Terrorism Network
AltaVista Moves from Default OR to Default AND
Canadian Universities Get Grant for Online Database
LLRXBu zz Tour of 50 State Web Sites
LLRXBu zz Archives : April 3, 2000 – Present
The Latest on Legal Research
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Business and Law is a portal for those interested in both arenas at http://www.businessandlaw.com/. The front page has e-commerce headlines from Moreover on the left, and topic listings on the right. Topics are categorized and include Finance, International, Employment Resources and volunteer opportunities amongst others.
Click on a category and you’ll get a crowded page of resources. On the left you’ll find Moreover headlines again. On the right you’ll first get a list of recommended books on that topic (the book titles link to Amazon), then Web directory related categories (which connect to link lists that look like the Dmoz.org directory) then annotated recommended links. Some of the recommended sites are search forms; for example, the Investing and Stock page has two forms for stock lookup under its recommended site listings.
This site has a search feature that lists results by categories as well as results found in the DMOZ listing. However, what’s really interesting about this site is its Company Information and Competitive Analysis page at http://www.businessandlaw.com/companyinfo.html. This page provides search options for profiles and financial information such as Hoover’s and EDGAR
Online. It also offers searching for news, Web technology and job postings. There’s plenty to see at this site, though the text could be spaced out a little
more. Worth a look.
Tarlton Law Library’s Center for Legal Research
The University of Texas School of Law’s Tarlton Library has a legal research center online at http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/tallons/content_search.html. It
offers keyword searching of the tables of content from law periodicals published inside and outside the United States. (Over 750 of ’em!)
Searching for asbestos found four results. Results provide just the publication title. Click on the title and you’ll get the table of contents for the publication’s relevant issue, which includes the article title, author, and page number (in other words, enough to take the reference into your library and retrieve it. Or, if you’ve got the money, you can order the documents directly for U Texas at
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/tallons/docdel.htm.)
If you are more interested in a single periodical rather than searching, the site lists the documents included in the database. Some journals, such as the
American Law and Economics Review, offer article abstracts and full-text links. Sources are divided by those published inside and outside the United States.
TeamsterNet, at http://www.teamster.net/, provides both forums and links of interest to those wanting to know more about the teamsters. (When you first
visit the site you’ll get a pop-up window informing you that the site is not affiliated with any teamster organization.)
While the center column has links to various discussion boards, the left column lists the subjects of the most recent messages. Some forums are busier than others — the UPS forum in particular looks really busy.
The center column also includes links to other sources. There are about 350 links at this writing; categories include Teamster Locals, Union Interest, and
Government. Annotation is okay. Links can be rated with votes.
In addition to forums and links, TeamsterNet has several news feeds from Moreover (some integrated into the forums, though the main Teamster news feed is on the front page.) Worth a look.
New York State Launches Counter-Terrorism Network
State officials in New York announced the launch of a Counter-Terrorism Network (CNT) designed to enable state law enforcement agencies to share anti-terrorist intelligence. The multi-step program, developed by IBM,
starts with electronically alerting 16 law enforcement zones. Final plans call for the network being accessible by all state law enforcement agencies and organizations responsible for protection of critical infrastructure. Get more information from the news story at
http://www.fcw.com/geb/articles/2002/0128/web-nys-01-31-02.asp.
AltaVista Moves from Default OR to Default AND
With little fanfare (well, no fanfare actually), AltaVista has moved from default OR (search for ANY terms entered in the query box) to default AND (search
for ALL terms entered in the query box.) So if AltaVista has been acting a little weird for you lately, that’s why – the default’s different now
AltaVista says, “Extensive testing on our index over the past few months has shown that ANDing of the query terms provides users with better overall results. This change is the latest step in AltaVista’s continuing mission to provide users with the best search results on the web.” That’s from John Ellis, Sr. VP of Engineering at AltaVista.
ALSO: AltaVista Offers Shortcuts to Invisible Web, from Chris Sherman of SearchDay:
www.searchenginewatch.com/searchday/02/sd0211-avshortcuts.html.
Canadian Universities Get Grant for Online Database
The National Post is reporting that six Canadian Universities have received a $2.6 million dollar grant to create an online database of old texts.
The universities involved are University of Victoria, University of Alberta, McMaster University, Université de Montréal, University of Toronto and the University of New Brunswick. From the news story: “Called the Text Analysis Portal for Research, the libraries will combine their electronic databases, which include legal documents, stories in aboriginal languages, rare poetry, oral statements and Old English texts.”
Editor’s Note (SP) : Also of interest: International Scholarly Communications Alliance formed by eight of world’s research library organizations, 2/6/2002.