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:
Office of Intellectual Freedom from the American
Library Association
WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center
Newswise Offers Directory of Experts
Search Engine Gigablast Enters Beta
LLRXBu zz Tour of 50 State Web Sites
LLRXBu zz Archives : April 3, 2000 – Present
The Latest on Legal Research
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SaveOnPhone has created an informational source about WorldCom.
WorldComNews (http://www.worldcomnews.com) has the latest news updates and commentary about the bleak future of the communications giant. News sources include The Clarion-Ledger, msnbc.com, Forbes, New York Times and Reuters.
This site offers general information about WorldCom and the accusations against it. The section on the company’s background includes the company’s history and finances, and it details how the pending bankruptcy will affect consumers, investors and 40% of the Internet users in the US. The Background section also includes a word from President Bush and looks at the question “Who is to blame?”
Is there more? You bet. A monthly time-line details the breakdown and there is an archive of media articles. And there are frequently asked questions for investors and consumers.
Office of Intellectual Freedom from the American Library Association
The Office of Intellectual Freedom from the American
Library Association has a site at http://www.ala.org/alaorg/oif/. If you follow along with the various legal issues to do with the Internet, you’ll find this site interesting.
There are several sections in this site so let’s get to it. This site contains information on several advocates, including the Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC), the Committee on Professional Ethics, and the Intellectual Freedom Action Network.
A great read is the Intellectual Freedom Issues section. Here you’ll find pages devoted to several topics, including banned books, deep linking, filters and filtering, and violence in the media. Lots of and lots to read here; set some time aside to explore the site.
Alabama.gov
The citizens of Alabama have a new Web site at
http://www.alabama.gov/default.aspx?s=1. Alabama.gov has a clean front page offering the viewer a choice of four options. Click on Travel & State Facts to scope out tourism, research and tourism. In addition to information about state government, this page also covers general information that a new comer might need like driving direction and resources.
On the Services page, the services are grouped into the following functional categories: Citizen, Business Education, State Employee and Online Services. The Citizen Services page links to additional services including Children, Vital Records and Cultural Interests. The Jobs and Career Development sub-category. The Business category address Human Resources, Legal Resources and Economic Development. It also features a Licensed Occupation Directory and the Alabama Work Incentives Network.
The Directory Page links to a Directory of State Agencies and Organization, as well as to a State Employee Directory. The e-services page links to Database Searches, Forms and more.
WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center
The World Intellectual Property Organization has posted an arbitration and mediation searchable database online at http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/search/. 1999 until 2002 cases can be searched by number. Case particulars include the domain name, complainant, respondent and a link to the decision. The decision details the procedural history, factual background and parties’ contentions before providing the findings and decision.
The panel decisions index of more than 1,500 decisions lists decided domain name cases by categories, such as geographic, educational and public sector. Panel decisions are also outlined in a legal index which includes the National Court Proceedings relating to UDRP.
Additional search options are by domain name and full text searching of WIPO Decisions. Search results can be sorted by date or relevance and can be viewed with or without the summaries. Each result also includes a “Find Similar” link.
ITIS Adds Statutes
National Law Library subsidiary, ITIS, has added more state statutes to its legal database. The database now includes 34 states with the addition of Arizona, Delaware, Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, Utah and Wyoming. According to the chairman of ITIS, the information database can be easily searched, by lawyers and non-lawyers, using Litidex search technology. Details are available at http://www.itisinc.com/. Get more information from the
press release at http://library.northernlight.com/FB20020723920000353.html.
Newswise Offers Directory of Experts
Newswise, an online clearinghouse for scientific, medical, liberal arts and business news, has created a searchable directory of experts at http://www.newswise.com/ncd/.
The site is searchable by several different variables, including institution name, state, institution category, and subject area. (Over 400 research institutions participate in Newswise; it isn’t clear how many are in the expert database.)
Searching for sources in Alaska found two results. Information includes phone, address, fax, and contact name and e-mail. Searching for everything in Agriculture found 15 results, and everything in Biotech found 10 results.
Search Engine Gigablast Enters Beta
Search engine Gigablast (http://www.gigablast.com) blasted into beta last weekend. And while they have a comparatively small index (73M pages), there are some good ideas here.
Do a simple search on the front page or use the advanced search to set up a query. You’ll notice that the advanced search lets you both sort by date and restrict your summary to a certain number of lines.
Search results (which as far as I can tell only provide 10 results no matter how many you specify in the advanced search) are cool. You get, in addition to the title, URL, and size, the last-spidered date, the last-modified date if available (the spider pulls it out of the header) and a link to a cache. The cache also has a spider date.
Gigablast also indexes URLs immediately, it looks like. Use the Add URL link and then refresh the front page a couple times. You’ll see the number change. I added a page that I know Gigablast didn’t have, then queried Gigablast a few
minutes later for a phrase that didn’t exist in its index but was on that page. Boom, it was there. When Gigablast says it indexes pages instantly it ain’t kidding. One to watch.