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:
Animal Law And History Web Site
Study Ranks How States Provide Access To Sex Offender Data
Google Adds Two Country-Specific Domains
ProQuest Makes Digitization Agreement with Tribune Publishing
LLRXBu zz Tour of 50 State Web Sites
LLRXBu zz Archives : April 3, 2000 – Present
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Animal Law and History Web Site
If you’re interested in laws relevant to animals, check out http://www.animallaw.info/. This site contains a variety of information about laws pertaining to the welfare and preservation of animals.
There are several ways to browse this site, using a series of drop-down menus on the home page. The U.S. Laws menu and U.S. Cases menu allows you to select a state and get a list of laws or cases relevant to that state. Not all states have law or case listings, and the annotation varies for each. The citation links will take you to a page with more detailed information.
If you’re less interested in locality and more in topic, you have several browsing options. The Topics menu leads to pages of information about different items including Animal Rights, Eagle Act, and Wildlife Management. The Laws menu
lists information on laws from Animal Fighting to Zoning, and the Species menus cover Bears to Wolves, with separate sections for wild and captive birds.
In addition to the items available from the drop-down menus, there are a few more elements on this site. The Non-U.S. law page is an expanding array of international items. Journals and Articles is an online library of articles that pertain to animal law, and Historical Materials discusses animal law
back to the 1800s. Worth a look.
Fed Courts
Fed Courts (http://www.fedcourts.com/), is a portal to Federal Courts across the United States. Select a state on the snappy red, white and blue map. There are also a list of federal court districts below the snappy map.
The State page starts with the Supreme Court level and bookmarks down the page to levels of Court of Appeals and U.S. Circuit & District. County and Municipal Courts are listed also, as are Resources sorted by category such as
Professional Rules & Commentary and Ethics Opinions. The text could be a little larger, but it’s an interesting site.
Melissa Data
Melissa Data, at http://www.melissadata.com/Lookups/index.htm, is a portal of a different sort. It’s an easy-to-use portal that has the types of information you usually find buried deep in reference sites.
Click on Campaign Contributions to view the names of people who contributed at least $200 to federal campaigns since 1994. Enter a zip code and select a year to launch your query. Results list the contributor name and employer or occupation. Next, you will see the amount and the date of the contribution. Click on the date to see where the money went.
Nonprofit organizations can also be searched by zip code or name. I tried a zip code and received a table of organizations listed with address, assets and income. The organization’s name links to its page which provides more data such as it type of foundation and organization, with activities and whether its
contributions are deductible.
This site will provide such information as the number of zip codes or area codes within a specific radius. Enter the zip or area code and the radius in miles. Details in the results table are location, location and number of businesses. The table is followed by the total population and businesses within the radius.
One other one I want to mention is the SIC Code and Business Counts. Search by entering as few as 2 digits of a code or the type of business. (To view a list of SIC categories, enter 00.) Results list the code with description and a link to view the count by state. So it goes, check it out to view other options and any search page can be bookmarked with Control D. Lots of
cool stuff here.
Study Ranks How States Provide Access To Sex Offender Data
A study from the University of Florida scores states on providing public access to information about sex offenders. On a scale of 1 to 7, states making the most information available to their residents via the Internet scored a six. The study also listed the states which provide the least amount of information and scored two points.
Fifty states have laws requiring sexual offender registration, which are called Megan’s Laws. Thirty-seven states, plus the District of Columbia, require that sex offender information be posted on the Web to raise the level of public awareness.
In a hearing to be heard before the United States Supreme Court, two states are appealing the laws charging that too much private information about the offender is being publicized. Get more details about the study at
http://www.napa.ufl.edu/2002news/sexoffenders.htm.
Google Adds Two Country-Specific Domains
Google’s added two country-specific domains: Poland (http://www.google.pl) and Thailand (http://www.google.co.th/). That brings the number of country-specific domains that Google offers to 36.
ProQuest Makes Digitization Agreement with Tribune Publishing
ProQuest has made an agreement with Tribune Publishing to digitize materials from two Tribune papers and make more recent content available from other Tribune papers.
The two papers which will have their entire historical backfiles digitized are the Chicago Tribune (from 1847) and the Los Angeles Times (from 1881.) ProQuest has gotten the distribution rights for microform and ASCII text versions of the two papers above as well as the following newspapers: the Hartford Courant, The Newport News Daily Press, the South Florida Sun- Sentinel, Newsday, The Orlando Sentinel, the Baltimore Sun, the Stamford Advocate, the Greenwich Time, and the Allentown Morning Call. You can get the press release about this agreement at
http://library.northernlight.com/FC20021105470000027.html.