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Hoover Institution Creates New Current Information Sites                     
The Hoover Institution Web site now has 3 new topical sites on "hot" issues in world politics and economics. Campaign Finance  (www.campaignfinancesite.org) traces the history of campaign finance reform, studies current regulations and legislation, and analyzes court cases and reform proposals.

There's also a list of links for tracking political donations. The International Money Fund (http://www.imfsite.org/) has articles regarding the role of the IMF in the world economy, including a backgrounder, reform proposals, operations, and financing programs. Finally, the Russian Economy section (http://www.russiaeconomy.org/) contains news and information about the current state of the Russian economic situation. For more information, check out the press release at http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000814/ca_hoover_.html.

Canadian Law Online                     

Martindale-Hubbell has created a site for information about the Canadian legal marketplace at http://www.canada.martindale.com/. The site provides visitors access to The Canadian Lawyer Locator, a database of more than 40,000 qualified Canadian lawyers and law firms. The locator is available at http://lawyers.martindale.com/canada. 

This database can be searched by lawyer or law firm name, geographical area, practice area, or language. Once you've searched the site, the page of information you receive for each lawyer includes their year of birth, college, law school (and college) position, and the firm for which they work. If you don't feel like wandering around looking for Canadian Lawyers, go back to the main page. You'll find information on Canadian law schools, bar associations, and provincial governments. Worth a look.

CourtLink Adds Bankruptcy Data                                     
CourtLink has now added US Federal bankruptcy data to its CaseStream e-access product. This now provides access to not only federal bankruptcy data but also US Federal civil and criminal information in one location. This is the third database to be added to CaseStream since it was launched last year. For more information, read the press release at: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000815/wa_courtli.html. 

xrefer.com Refines Search Engine                                                    
Reference engine xrefer.com, last mentioned in ResearchBuzz at the end of May 2000 (http://www.researchbuzz.com/news/2000/may25may31.html), has refined its search engine, allowing users to search groups of reference resources.

As you may remember, xrefer searches reference materials, including specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias. When they launched they had just over a dozen resources; now they have about 30. (New additions to their engine include the Penguin Dictionary of Economics, the Penguin Rhyming Dictionary, and the Dictionary of Biology from Oxford University Press. You may get a complete list of resources at http://w1.xrefer.com/allbooks.jsp.)

Now in addition to searching all the reference services at once, you may search reference groups divided into facts, quotes, and words. Searching the facts group for "giraffe," for example, found 17 results, the first page of which was very relevant. (Well, except for the entry on "semantic satiation.") A full search had 42 results, including several instances of the same Picasso quote.

Pac-Info Back and Adding Sites to its Search Engine                           
A few weeks ago we mentioned a Pac-Info makeover. The directory of public records databases has been fairly quiet since last May, only adding a few sites to its list of over 1500 sites. Last week, however, they added several sites, including the Ector County Civil War Pension Claims and the Winkler County Cemetery Index. There have also been several links fixed in the Florida listings. Check 'em out! http://www.pac-info.com/locations/n_sites.shtml.

Association Central.com Home of Assoc. Information                                                                                            
Need information on Associations? http://AssociationCentral.com/ is the place to be. The site contains information on over 15,000 trade and professional associations.

NY Dept of Labor Offers Safety Library                                               
The New York Department of Labor has started a virtual library project that currently offers access to over several hundred occupational safety and health titles on their site at http://www.NYSafety.org/.

The main page of the site has three columns. The first column lists titles that are new on the site with direct links to an Albany.edu catalog listing. Click on a title and go to the catalog listing. You'll get a title list. Click on a title. You'll get a catalog listing that you may find confusing. (I found it confusing, anyway.) Want you're looking for is the Electronic Access part, which will give you a direct link to the full report. Most of these are in PDF, so make sure you have the Acrobat reader handy. The second column is a list of occupations (agriculture, construction, office workers, etc), which act as keyword searches on the albany.edu site. Listings are the same as those I described for the first column. The third column contains problems and solutions (asbestos, lead, noise, etc.) that, again, act as keyword searches. The results pages can be a little confusing, and the text is somewhat hard to read at times (the blue links are a little difficult to read on the tan, parchmentlike background) but there's a lot of information here. Worth a look.

Need A Dentist? Check the SmileFinder Search Engine                     
izyx, inc. has launched SmileFinder.com, an online service for consumers, dentists, and anyone interested in dentistry. this site includes 170,000 dental office listings and information on dental professionals and practices in North America.

From the search page (http://SmileFinder.com/sfsearch.php), you can search by several different variables, including what work you might need done, dentist name, dentist specialty, age of patient, city, state, or zip code. The initial search result page you will get will have just the dentist name and address, but dentist names will be hyperlinked. Click on a dentist's name and you'll get a little more information, including the place where the dentist got their DDS and what languages they speak. The search engine works well, but it appears that if you search for a dentist's name without searching for a location, the search won't work. Worth a look.