LLRXBuzz - February 18, 2002
By Tara Calishain, Published on February 17, 2002
The Latest on
Legal Research
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Business and Law
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
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.
